For a second, the thought occurred that if the day didn't unfold as they expected, this was the kind of thing that would be taken down and used in evidence in the aftermath. After all, you're generally supposed to win your match before taking your curtain call. As it was, they sailed serenely through to the All Ireland semi-final but unless their forwards find their radar over the next couple of weeks, the third Sunday of next month will be another Dub-free affair.

On a cold but for the most part calm day in Croke Park, they missed every which way you like. They kicked 16 wides and they kicked them left and they kicked them right. They kicked them high and low and all around, just not through the posts as much as they should have. For a team that had all the possession they could conceivably have dreamed of, their final total of 1-12 was woefully low, even if it comfortably dismissed the 0-5 of a Westmeath side that just didn't turn up.

Croke Park decided to fill the customary 15-minute delay by playing a re-run of Derval O'Rourke's silver medal-winning run from Friday night on the big screens.

It passed, oh, 12.72 seconds or so. The delay was, as ever, on Garda orders to allow latearriving fans take their seats without causing a crush at the gates. But it was taken under protest by the GAA and Nickey Brennan made it clear that this delay of games was a carry-on he was growing tired of.

Whatever. It's hard to see quite what he's going to do about it. Mind you, considering what followed, maybe he'd have been as well closing the gates a half an hour beforehand and sparing those who'd paid for tickets the dismay of seeing what value their money had bought them. For it turned out to be every bit as one-sided as we'd feared it might.

They led by eight at halftime and it's no exaggeration to posit that the margin could easily have been twice that. In that first half alone, they shot 10 wides, six of them from positions in which there was no pressure . . . or at least none of it coming from men in maroon jerseys. One of those wides should have been a Jason Sherlock goal and only for an amazing piece of sleight of hand from Westmeath goalkeeper Gary Connaughton, Mossy Quinn would have raised a green flag after just 11 minutes. Add all that to the fact that Conal Keaney would likely have goaled if he'd trusted his right boot instead of insisting on his left early on and the 1-7 to 02 scoreline at the break was more damn lie than statistic.

The Dublin dominance stemmed wholly and utterly from midfield. Ciaran Whelan made catches so clean there must hardly have been a smudge on his white gloves by afternoon's end. Shane Ryan's turn in the support actor's role will have impressed the academy and Bryan Cullen swept, fetched and foraged beautifully at centre-back.

Though Whelan was most obviously the engine, Cullen has to take huge credit for making his duel with Dennis Glennon one in which the Westmeath player spent much more time keeping tabs on his supposed marker than the other way around.

A run-through of the outstanding scores of the day won't detain us for long. Jason Sherlock possibly aside, no forward for either team will have gone to bed happy last night. Mossy Quinn scored Dublin's goal after 13 minutes but even it stemmed from a piece of wayward shooting from Conal Keaney . . . a relatively straight-forward point effort coming back off the lefthand post and dropping into Quinn's hands. From there, he was helped by a slip by corner-back Francis Boyle and his low shot made it 1-2 to 0-1.

The best point of the day belonged to Quinn and came seven minutes later, but its beauty owed more to his side's fluency than any triumph of score-taking. It was a move that started with the ball in the hands of Stephen Cluxton in the goal under the Hill and one that went through three pairs of hand before Sherlock played a beauty of a ball fully 40 yards into Quinn's arms behind the Westmeath defence. The goal was on, the point was taken.

By then, Dublin were rampant. The free that Dessie Dolan swung over in the 18th minute was the last time the Westmeath total would move for a full 31 minutes, by which stage Paul Caffrey's side were safely home. Ray Cosgrove stuck a nice one, Brogan and Sherlock combined cleverly from a sideline ball to stitch another, Keaney and Quinn tapped over sundry frees. But it all meant nothing really.

With Dolan shackled expertly by a brilliant Paul Griffin display, Westmeath were never a factor.

Hard to know what it all means for Dublin. When Kerry lost last year's All Ireland final, the popular explanation put forward was that they'd never had to jump too high to clear the hurdles they'd found in their way before they'd met Tyrone.

Well, Dublin reached no massive heights here either, certainly not in front of goal.

The championship rolls on, curiouser and curiouser.