Tyrone’s reputation for using drawn games as a springboard to better things under Mickey Harte takes another burnishing. The goals that kept Cavan alive a fortnight ago came when they were already dead here. Not by accident, funny enough.
“We learned that if you give any opposition the opportunity to score goals against you, you will have to be very good to win the game,” said Harte afterwards. “The idea is then that you must do your level best to stop goals. It doesn’t matter who the opposition is, if you can keep them from scoring goals, they will need a lot of chances to beat you.
“That’s really the best lesson of all for us. They only got seven points the first day so if we can keep the goals out at the time of the game that really matters – which we did do – then we have a good chance to go on and win the game.”
Longest spell
The upshot is Tyrone have an Ulster final to prepare for against Donegal. It will be their first since 2010, their longest spell out of the provincial showpiece since the 1970s. Harte bristled just a touch at the suggestion that six years was a long time. He remembers longer.
“It’s strange how that becomes the beat on the street in Tyrone. I came through lots of years in Tyrone football and Ulster finals weren’t on the horizon. Now it becomes a famine if you are not there in six years. Hopefully we have ended that famine. We are back in the final. But a final without a cup, it’s not great to get over a famine, if you don’t have something to eat at the end of it.
“The thing I love about it is that we are in the Ulster final, that is for sure. We are playing in the Ulster final, this is the one that matters, there is a cup at the end of this. The best team will lift a cup that day. The team that plays the best and applies themselves better will lift the cup and I hope that’s Tyrone.
“But we know the opposition that is in front of us, how they have shared the last few Ulster titles with Monaghan and we weren’t in that shake up at that time.
“They are coming in to it with a lot more experience of Ulster finals than we are, but at the same time we know this place well too.”
