Tyrone's blueprint the one to retain

On Gaelic Games: An exceptional football season concluded at the weekend. One of the more tantalising questions raised by Sunday evening was what if Cormac McAnallen hadn't died nearly 18 months ago? Would Tyrone now have won three All-Irelands on the spin? It's hopelessly speculative but such was the continuing inability of Kerry to cope with Tyrone's game you'd be entitled to wonder what might have happened had the champions not been struck by that traumatic event.

Mickey Harte was candid in his appraisal of last year, pointing out that an All-Ireland, particularly a first one, involves a lot of "taking the cup around" and prolonged celebration. In other words, the team could easily have fallen prey to the traditional difficulties that have helped make retaining the Sam Maguire an impossibility for 16 years and counting.

You can never rewrite the records but even the hypothesis is a little unfair on Kerry, whose overall form last year was better than it was this time around. One of the team's notable achievements in 2004 was to shift up the gears as the championship progressed and hit the final running.

This time the effect wasn't as marked - albeit you have to factor in the difference between Tyrone and Mayo in the past two finals. Like Kerry last year, Tyrone saved their best display until the biggest day of all, whereas 12 months ago Mayo were well on the way down from their peak, the defeat of Tyrone in the All-Ireland quarter-final.

In the end Kerry played too conservatively, trying to counter Tyrone's style by copying it but running out of gas in the attempt.

The main reason for wondering how Tyrone might have fared last year in different circumstances is that there were indications in the team's first All-Ireland win of two years ago that Mickey Harte might have a preparation schedule capable of being repeated.

By reducing the demands on players of regimented collective-training sessions and instituting individualised programmes Harte looked like he'd come up with a sustainable blueprint that could win an All-Ireland without compromising the title defence.

Harte's preferred reliance on matches for keeping fit was certainly catered for in this championship. The first team to win an All-Ireland after 10 matches, Tyrone will hardly be the last.

The championship format, now five years old, means such heavy fixture loads are going to be an ongoing possibility, although Tyrone's record of three replays won't necessarily be repeated regularly. But as has already become clear, the ability to handle a match every two weeks or so through the summer is now more the governing rhythm than the big wind-ups and collisions of the past.

The major factor in Kerry's undoing was, as widely expected in Ulster, the Munster champions had no experience in the past two years of having to face the demands of a match against Armagh or Tyrone.

Consequently they struggled to get their game up to the required level of intensity for anything like a sustained period.

Jack O'Connor has been surprisingly quick to hint at his departure. It seems a precipitate reaction. One defeat in two years is fewer than Mickey Harte has endured but the disappointment was clear. O'Connor came in to elevate Kerry above the new realities of Ulster football and the attempt on Sunday didn't go well in terms of either tactics or performance.

This year has also showcased Harte's great talent for improvisation. Like Galway, their only predecessors as champions to have lost a match, Tyrone were able to piece together their optimum configuration as the championship progressed.

Ironically, it wasn't so much the defeat by Armagh in the Ulster replay that threw open the doors of perception but the first half of the drawn quarter-final against Dublin. The key moves at the business end of the season were the redeployment of Conor Gormley to defence and Joe McMahon to full back.

Armagh might well be frustrated at how the season turned out for them and mindful of their old mantra about football being a game of inches. But realistically, Tyrone were clearly superior to the Ulster champions for much of the three matches in which they met, although Armagh can ruefully reflect that their best performance of the three was the one they lost.

It hasn't ultimately mattered but one area in which Tyrone have struggled is the putting away of matches.

Armagh should have been dispatched in the first Ulster final meeting, Dublin in the drawn quarter-final, while Sunday's match wasn't anything as close as a three-point contest.

Tyrone's average lead throughout the second half was notionally more than two and a half points and although Kerry closed to a single score more than once, the total time when the margin was down to the minimum was only six minutes.

Admittedly the goal scored against the run of play contributed hugely to keeping the match tight on the scoreboard, but Tyrone were in the strange position of being tangibly in Kerry's sights but out of their reach.

It was a great curtain call for Peter Canavan and Chris Lawn. Canavan's goal decisively turned the match before half-time. His scores have the same sort of impact as DJ Carey's for Kilkenny; they lift his team-mates and demoralise the opposition by reminding them of the substance to his reputation.

Lawn's retirement was less trumpeted but represented perfect timing. He gave a splendid display of perceptive covering and aggression on the ball.

Former Clare hurler Cyril Lyons was slightly embarrassed to be brought on for a lap of honour in the Munster final of 1995 but by the time he was sprung in that year's All-Ireland final the team needed him in the tense closing stages of the match with Offaly.

So it was for Lawn, who came into Sunday's final for the last 20 minutes after McMahon sustained an injury.

Tyrone needed him to slot into the defence and pick up the tempo of what was a great collective performance.

Given how much criticism he had suffered over the years in stoical silence, Lawn's almost elegiac retirement interview was an uncomfortable reminder that vast numbers of players serve up epic seasons for the love of the game, pride in their county and no material reward, despite which they must face the often unforgiving rigours of a professional media.

Finally something must be done about timekeeping.

The lost minute wasn't really crucial on Sunday but Kerry were magnanimous in a way not all teams beaten in such circumstances by a single score might be in the future.

A countdown clock is a simple answer, as can be seen this Sunday in the women's final.

smoran@irish-times.ie