Longford will up their game for Dubs: Rory O’Carroll

Rory O’Carroll says the Dublin camp have taken on board the lessons of last summer as they start out on the 2015 Championship road against Longford in this Sunday’s Leinster SFC quarter-final in Croke Park (4.0).

The Dubs were dumped out of the Championship by Donegal last summer and during the League Jim Gavin’s team showed signed of tweaking their strategy.

“We were exposed hugely and we did pay for that. We might have been a bit naive going all-out attack which felt great, it was really enjoyable to go out and do that. Now we just have to embrace the challenge of beating the blanket defence."

“When you lose, you tend to analyse it more. When we looked at it and analysed it, those were the incidents that came up. If you were to say ‘How could we stop that in the future?’ that’s where those changes came in."

“I wouldn’t say it’s radically different. There have been times I’ve been blowing my lungs out trying to get lads back to cover … it has changed slightly with where the full-back line has that bit more cover.It’s really a work in progress. We struggled around it in the league.”

Looking ahead to Sunday’s duel which could see Rory up against his Kilmacud Crokes teammate, Brian Kavanagh, he adds: “For us in many ways, to people looking in, it’s a lose-lose. We’re expected to win and if we lose, we’re branded as losing to a Division Four team. It’s going to be tough either way."

“Especially playing a team from Division Four, they’re definitely going to up their game.”