Dessie Mone rates Dublin among the best teams he has faced in his decade-long Monaghan career.

The All-Ireland champions coasted to a 17-point victory over the beaten Ulster finalists on Saturday, and the Clontibret half back reflected in the Irish News: "I suppose over the years you come across some very good teams, but Dublin are right up there.

"They move the ball very fast. Their inside forward line is very quick. They attack you in droves and that is very hard to stop.

"They put you under a lot of pressure, but have been working on that. They have been working hard for the last three or four years and it is all starting to come for them. It's going to take a very, very good team to beat them."

After expending a huge amount of energy in seeing off Kildare after extra-time seven days earlier, Monaghan were far from their best according to Mone.

"We only had a week to prepare for this match," he continued.

"We got promoted to Division 1. We had a good league campaign. We had a good championship campaign. We had to go to a replay against Armagh. We had to go to extra-time against Kildare.

"But we were missing the likes of Eoin Lennon and we picked up injuries. For a small county, it's hard for us to deal with those injuries.

"The likes of Dublin have a bigger pick. With another week's recovery, we could have worked on it a bit more. A week's recovery means a lot in inter-county football. It takes the body a long time to recover from these games. But there was nothing we could do about it." Tweet

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