Beat us and Sam is there for the taking
Tyrone ace Hughes is wary of Dublin hurdle
Impressed: Tyrone midfielder Kevin Hughes
Related Articles
Tuesday July 27 2010
KEVIN Hughes is planning to mount a stern resistance to Dublin’s belated championship momentum – but has warned his Red Hand team-mates that if Pat Gilroy’s men catch them on the hop on Saturday in Croke Park, there could be no stopping the boys in blue this summer.
Hughes has tasted All-Ireland success both through the direct route, as Ulster champions with Tyrone in 2003, and through the back door in both 2005 and 2008 and those two more recent successes have taught him the benefits of a successful run.
“All you have to do is look to Kerry last year and to ourselves in 2008,” said Hughes.
“We stumbled through the qualifiers and kept a low profile but a good quarter-final set both of us up to go on and win the All-Ireland. Dublin, no more than ourselves, would feel they’re in a strong position if they could get by this weekend.”
Hughes also paid tribute to the new-found defensive zeal shown by the Dublin players last week. “Their work rate has really impressed me,” he noted.
“You could see that as soon as a Louth player got the ball, he was surrounded by three or four Dublin players.
“They were very disciplined in the tackle and were quite effective at dispossessing the player and counter attacking as a unit. I think what they’re trying to do is definitely working. So many times they’ve cruised through Leinster and once they got to this stage, they’ve collapsed.
“But they’ve shown not just in the last few games but in the league as well that they’re working a lot harder for each other this year and it’s very hard to imagine them collapsing.”
Hughes was also impressed with Eoghan O’Gara’s performance on Saturday in kicking 2-1 against Louth – a sign, he reckons, of greater versatility in the Dublin attack.
“He’s a fella that gets the ball and knows what he wants to do with it which is run at defences. A lot of counties would kill for a full forward line that,” said Hughes.
“A lot of people thought that if Brogan didn’t score a pile then Dublin were in trouble but they obviously had O’Gara, Bryan Cullen and all these guys the last day.”
- Conor McKeon
