TYRONE MANAGER Mickey Harte had the content air of a man who had arrived prepared for the worst and been pleasantly surprised. Yesterday’s emphatic win over Derry at Casement Park confirms this year as so far both the least troubled and most impressive of the county’s All-Ireland defences, neither of which previously got as far as the provincial final.
Derry were admittedly understrength but there had been little indication that their challenge would fall so curiously flat. Harte was, predictably, keen to play down the positive implications of having defeated their two closest rivals, Armagh and Derry, in the first two outings of the Ulster championship.
“We got the upper hand but that’s not to say the world will always be like that. There’ll be days when we’ll struggle as well and parts of today we struggled too. We’re just in the Ulster final. There’s no silverware handed out today and we have to focus on Cavan or Antrim and that will throw up new challenges.”
On a day that had started with intense interest in the tactical gambits, Tyrone dropping an extra man back when defending and Derry reconfiguring their attack to leave Paddy Bradley (who had a disappointing afternoon with just one pointed free to show) and Mark Lynch isolated inside, and using deep-lying ball-winners and runners as support, Harte emphasised the importance of being adaptable.
“It was always going to be like that. Tactics play a major part in the game these days. If you go into games without thinking what you want to do or what your opposition might do then I think you’ll be left behind.
“Every day’s a new day. It’s a bit like a game of chess. You can’t show your hand always to everybody. You have to have a number of hands. If you’re depending on one particular way of playing the game then people will read that very quickly. We’ve been about versatility in players as individuals and we’d like to be about versatility in team plans as well. We’d like our players to be able to adapt to different situations and opponents.”
His Derry counterpart Damian Cassidy pointed to where it had all gone wrong for his team.
“Where the game changed dramatically for us was about the 14th minute after half-time. Up to then both teams had been nip and tuck and we had probably created more chances than Tyrone but didn’t take any of them, including some very scoreable chances. Then Tyrone scored to put them four up and that was psychologically a big hit for us.
“Then when the sending-off (of corner back Kevin McGuckin) came – which I unfortunately didn’t get to see as I was following our midfield positioning at the kick-out – that finished the match out for us. We’ve a lot of soul-searching to do .”
Asked did he feel Tyrone were eight points a better team, his response was resigned. “They were in the last 10 minutes. We had scoring chances but there’s no way you can win championship matches if you don’t take 75 to 80 per cent of those chances and we weren’t even close to those stats today. But we can’t change that; all we can do is knuckle down for the next match.
“I don’t think we can be arrogant enough to cast away the chance of the qualifiers. If it was good enough for Tyrone to push on and take the success out of it, it’s good enough for us. That’s the challenge.”
Tyrone’s current Footballer of the Year Seán Cavanagh agreed with Cassidy’s pinpointing of the critical period.
“We knew the first 10 minutes of the second half was going to be crucial,” he said, “because we knew Cassidy was going to have them well fired up. Once we got a couple of scores 10 or 15 minutes into the second half and with Justy (McMahon) and Conor (Gormley) and PJ (Quinn) shutting out the Bradleys up front we always knew Derry would be a wee bit limited for scores and that’s the way it ended up.”
