Dublin stand-in manager Paul Clarke has challenged an experimental outfit to try and shoot the lights out against Wexford on Sunday and squeeze into the O'Byrne Cup semi-finals.
A youthful and much-changed Dubs drew 1-13 to 0-16 with Offaly at Parnell Park last night, meaning they require a 16-point win in Enniscorthy to progress from Group 1 to the semi-finals.
With Jim Gavin in Cape Town on a team holiday along with his All-Ireland winners, Clarke has taken the reins, as he did 12 months ago. Only the group winners go on to the last four so Dublin have a tough mission to eat into the points difference the Faithful County racked up in their 3-16 to 0-09 defeat of Wexford.
Clarke isn't giving up the ghost though.
"We can only deal with what we have," he said. "We’ll look at our players and talk to them, have a bit of a session maybe on Friday and assess how things are going.
"We’ll put a squad of players on the bus that want to go down and win the game. We always knew we had to win it, now we’re just putting a figure on it, a number on it.
"We’ll go down and give it a shot. Wexford will not make it easy for us, by no means. If they can keep us to 16 points or 15 points they'll see that as maybe a moral victory."
Meanwhile, Offaly manager Stephen Wallace refused to get carried away with his team's encouraging Parnell Park display.
They rallied from five points down to nab a draw and give themselves a great chance of marching on, but Wallace afterwards kept things in perspective.
"You’re up against a very experimental Dublin side," the Kerryman said. "I know they’d a couple of the U21s, and maybe the likes of young (Colm) Basquel, (Killian) O’Gara, (Sean) McMahon, Brian Howard, guys there who’d be looking to push on, but that’s an experimental Dublin side and at the end of the day we didn't beat them.
"Let's call a spade a spade. It’s a draw, you’d have taken it coming up, absolutely you would have taken it. We’re delighted with the effort and the endeavour, but look, it’s the O’Byrne Cup. Let's be realistic."
