“We wanted to be competitive and no better team that Dublin to give you an idea of where you’re at.”

Malachy O’Rourke and Monaghan are in a good place at the moment!

“Maybe it’s the first game of the season so. Their six took down Con O’Callaghan in the first half as well and that was probably more of a textbook black card but listen, you just have to roll with the punches and they went against us.”

Two Dublin players spent time in the sin bin and Jim Gavin believes Monaghan’s Barry Kerr should have received a similar punishment.

“Some of the guys who were watching the monitor mentioned something, but I didn’t see it. But there is a lot of people talking about it so I will have a look at it.”

Mayo manager James Horan was unable to give a definitive opinion on the alleged eye gouging incident in Castlebar on Saturday evening.

“We wouldn’t approve of that and that wouldn’t have happened from our players from what I know of the guys, to be honest.”

Horan’s Roscommon counterpart Anthony Cunningham didn’t see the incident either.

“One of the difficult things (to do), whether it’s secret or not, is that defensively I wasn’t us to be hard to beat. So you have to start somewhere and that’s where you put your structure in and build from there.”

Kerry restricted Tyrone to just two points from play and manager Peter Keane makes no secret of his desire to lay solid foundations at the back.

“They set up very well today and probably won the game in the first half.”

Red Hands boss Mickey Harte was impressed with the Kingdom’s defensive set-up.

“Definitely, it threw us off a wee bit, that bit of indiscipline midway through the second half was a big factor.”

Cavan played a part of yesterday’s match against Galway with 12 men due to having three players sin-binned and Mickey Graham agreed it proved costly in their two-point defeat.

“The second-half performance was reasonably good. We went up four or five points, goal changes in that five points as well. But at the same time character was shown which is important at this time of the year.”

Kevin Walsh was pleased with the Tribesmen’s second-half showing.

“It’s disappointing. We probably would feel we left it behind us. We missed a lot of easy scores and especially near the end there, they were dropping balls short.”

Kieran McGeeney and Armagh shared the Division 2 spoils with Kildare in Newbridge.

“When you kick the last score of the game to draw, you have to be thankful. The heart and the character and the mental toughness that they showed is something that hasn’t always been there with Kildare teams, so very happy from that perspective.”

Jimmy Hyland rode to the Lilywhites’ rescue with two injury-time frees and Cian O’Neill highlighted the battling qualities displayed by his players.

“As much as anything, maybe our attitude changed, maybe we brought a bit more aggression and more directness to our play.”

John Sugrue’s Laois came from five points down to open their Division 3 campaign with a six-point win at Down’s expense in Newry on Saturday evening.

“Laois were bringing on experienced players but we don’t have that level of experience at the moment. Generally, I was satisfied because there was a lot of good football played but we didn’t have the players to match them physically.”

New Mourne County boss Paddy Tally has a big job on his hands.

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