By John Harrington

Dublin manager Jim Gavin admits one of the challenges of playing Kerry is their unpredictability.

He knew what to expect from Donegal in the All-Ireland Quarter-Final – that they would set out with a deep defensive line – but Kerry aren’t so easy to read.

So far in the Championship it looks like they too have adopted a deeper defensive line than they did in last year’s All-Ireland Final defeat to Dublin, but in the past they have also occasionally pushed right up on the Dublin kick-out to good effect.

It remains to be seen what approach they take on Sunday, and Gavin believes Dublin are best served focusing on themselves because Kerry are capable mixing up their game-plan.

“They’ve shown various game-plans during their National League campaign. We met them in the final,” he said. “Once they got their man sent off, I think it was the 48th minute, there was only two points in that game. They are well able to push up high, they are well able to get their forward players behind the ball and set up a defensive line across the middle.

“They’re unpredictable in that sense. What Kerry can bring, because they have such talented and experienced players, you can’t plan for every eventuality. Therefore we’ve based most of our preparation on our game-plan, what way we want to play.

“That normally sees us get a performance. If we get a performance we’ll be there or thereabouts at the end of the game.”

Dublin were convincing winners over Kerry in the League Final and are going for a fourth consecutive Championship victory over their great rivals today.

But Gavin insists there’s little between the teams and believes Kerry have evolved as a team since last year’s All-Ireland Final.

“They know and we know there’s literally a bounce of the ball between us, some of the score-lines would reflect otherwise but that’s the harsh reality of it,” he says.

“When you look at the strength in depth that they have in the squad now, they have grown this year. There’s multiple All-Ireland winners in that squad and we are nowhere near that in this Dublin football team. Tadhg Morley and Brian Begley have come into the side, they look very composed.

“They still have their marquee forwards up front and outstanding players coming off the bench; Barry John Keane, Buckley…we could go on. James O’Donoghue is back, Colm Cooper will probably be back as well and Paul Geaney is back to great form.

“Darran O’Sullivan is injury-free and looks very fluid in the game itself. Donnchadh Walsh is back to his best and I could go on and on about the quality of this Kerry side so it’s going to be a really tough game and a big challenge for the Dublin football team.

“We understand the challenge that it is and this one will go down to the wire.”