By Cian O'Connell

Monaghan's return to prominence has been one of the good Gaelic Football stories during the past decade so Sunday's Allianz League Croke Park success over Dublin carried importance for Malachy O'Rourke's team.

While the stakes weren't exactly piled high, Monaghan still found a way to eke out a victory courtesy of Fintan Kelly's excellent late point.

Monaghan have competed strongly with Dublin in the League in recent years, but it was significant to win at GAA headquarters according to O'Rourke. "That's it, everyone knows we've lost four quarter-finals here," O'Rourke says. 

"Again, Championship is different than the League, but we always felt that we came up against quality teams too when we lost. 

"A lot of the main games in the year are played in Croke Park so you like to come up and perform well here. We feel we have done that in the past, in Championship and League games. But that is always a boost to come up and perform well.

"Despite Dublin being missing some regulars, they're still a quality team. All of their panel players are quality players so to come up and compete well and get the victory is satisfying. It was a good day's work."

O'Rourke is encouraged about the increasing depth of the Monaghan panel ahead of what promises to be an interesting Ulster Championship opener against Tyrone.

"Even though the points weren't going to make any difference, we wanted to test ourselves to see how we'd fare out and you'll learn a lot about yourself, where your strengths and weaknesses are," O'Rourke adds.

"From that point of view it was good and there's no doubt it does give you a bit of confidence when you beat a team like Dublin. We'll take the positives out of it and we know we have plenty to improve on as well.

"The League has been great for us. We gave a lot of members of the panel good time and valuable game time, not just coming on for the last couple of minutes of the game.

"We're happy where the panel is and going forward we have a strong panel. But there's a lot of work ahead of us and we'll just get on with it over the next couple of weeks."