NO PLACE FOR ANGER
Brace yourselves for a chess match, not an Ulster street fight
ON TUESDAY, at a media briefing to promote the winner-takes-all Super 8s clash between Donegal and Tyrone at Ballybofey, Mickey Harte was backed into a corner over the pitch dimensions story that refused to go away.
The irony that he was the one to start it wasn’t lost as he got increasingly irritated by the line of questioning from various quarters over why he blamed live broadcaster Sky for the narrowing of the Healy Park pitch for the previous round against Dublin.
With Sky denying making such a request, the whole conspiracy theory saga has rumbled on and on to the extent that former Tyrone All-Ireland winner Owen Mulligan was claiming this week that the tightened dimensions were not aimed at restricting the influence of kick-out strategist supreme Stephen Cluxton, but rather to prepare Tyrone for the pitch dimensions of Ballybofey on Sunday afternoon. Right… Maybe Harte’s throwaway line was intended to obscure the deficiencies in the performance at Omagh against the All-Ireland champions.
After freewheeling through the previous two matches — clocking up a staggering 7-44 between a round four qualifier against Cork and a Super 8s opener against Roscommon — Tyrone looked to have rediscovered their mojo.
Prior to that, they stuttered against Monaghan, crashing out of Ulster in the process, and scraped through a disjointed opening qualifier against Meath.
And yet one of the stark statistics of Omagh was that they didn’t force a single save of note from Cluxton. With Dublin mirroring Tyrone’s defensive shield, Tyrone had no imposing ball-winner at full-forward to go long and direct.
The personnel that Harte has picked to fit his running game leaves the team a bit one dimensional in an attacking sense, particularly chasing a game.
That rarest of beauties — a high, dropping delivery around the edge of the square — eventually materialised when Tyrone needed to chase the game and saw Cluxton punch the ball away under pressure.
It was only when the game was all but lost — Kevin McManamon pushing Dublin six clear, 1-11 to 08, in the 59th minute — that the home side threw off the shackles, dared to push bodies up and keep them there, and truly went for it.
By the fourth minute of injury time, Cluxton was rattled, a couple of kick-outs had leaked over the tightened sideline, the gap was down to two, and there was a connection to a vociferous home crowd for the first time all evening.
Who knows how the game would have ended had Ronan O’Neill’s free not tailed well wide.
So what is also one of Tyrone’s great strengths — a double sweeper set-up with Colm Cavanagh and Frank Burns marshalling the defensive cordon — is also one of Tyrone’s greatest weaknesses.
A team that doesn’t engage with the opposition until roughly the 45-metre line — at home — effectively removes the advantage of a partisan crowd.
It allowed Dublin to suck the heat and energy out of the game when it suited them. A straitjacket of a system that restricts a team to playing the very same — whether it has home advantage or not, whether with the wind or against — contains an obvious flaw.
The build-up to Ballybofey has played up the edge of a fire-and-brimstone rivalry. From the bloodletting of 1973 when Donegal last lost a Championship game to Tyrone at the venue, to the history of intense grudge matches built on border rivalries and resentments that make the GAA what it is.
This Tyrone, though, have evolved away from the type of teams that Harte master-minded to a hat-trick of All-Ireland victories in 2003, ’05 and ’08, teams that had a mix of snarling, in-your-face defensive bite and the ability to play glorious football.
Who is the enforcer in the Tyrone set-up now? Who carries the edge of a Ryan McMenamin or the hardnosed authority of a Conor Gormley?
Colm Cavanagh offers a strong, physical presence but as a spare man. Donegal, too, have regenerated from the talented and hardnosed bunch that went all the way in 2012.
Declan Bonner has injected pace and youth and adventurous ambition into the team — but this encounter might end up being about a whole different set of qualities.
Don’t be surprised if those watching start bemoaning the lack of big
hits or complaining that it lacks bone-shuddering intensity. If Tyrone set up not to engage until inside their own half, and Donegal plan along similar lines without the ball, then expect another version of Omagh, which turned into a glorified conditioned game that the players go through in the warm-up: basically, an extended version of a tackling grid inside either 45.
Now the quality of tackling between Tyrone and Dublin was a thing to behold — Paul Mannion’s dispossession on Cathal McShane who looked to be in on goal was just one example of the all-round skillset of the modern player, whether forward or defender.
Round two of the Super 8s redeemed the new quarter-final series add-on, the absorbing tactical battle of Omagh followed by brilliantly exciting encounters between Kildare and Galway, and Monaghan and Kerry.
This weekend could be cut from a different cloth.
After the high-minded plaudits bestowed on last weekend’s hurling action, the action at Ballybofey is likely to require patience and an appreciation of the level of thinking that is behind all the various moving parts and how they are positioned on the field.
A Tyrone victory would end Donegal’s proud unbeaten record at the venue — one that dates back to 2010 in League and Championship — and seal a place in an All-Ireland semi-final at Croke Park.
The stakes have never been higher in Ballybofey.