ENOUGH OF THE CHEAP SHOTS
Mattie Donnelly defends Tyrone’s young team which fell short of expectation in this year’s championship, and calls for a rethink on the use of the black card
MATTIE DONNELLY is not in the regrets game, just the learning one. Over three months have passed since Tyrone’s only defeat of the season sent them crashing out of the summer and it still smarts. One game, one point and their Championship dreams are flushed down the toilet, and just to salt their wounds they were left to sit back and watch Mayo press Dublin hard to the wire.
Thing is, that was supposed to be them. Early in the year, Tyrone were picked out from the pack as the most likely side to make Dublin sweat for a number of reasons.
There was their form – they had gone unbeaten through 17 games – and there was a road map to the final that seemed all the easier to navigate with Dublin crashing into Kerry on the other side, and Mayo desperately searching for their A game.
Above all, it was deemed that they had the athleticism, speed and game smarts and when they finally shook that persistent Donegal monkey off their back, the road was clear enough for them to be conferred with the status as the number-one contenders.
The cheap psychological shot is to wonder if they believed their own publicity.
‘You could let it seep into you,’ admits Donnelly, ‘but personally I don’t know whether it got into other people’s heads but I do think we are contenders and rightfully so.
‘We feel we are contenders and that is the goal – that’s where we are striving to go to justify that there are a lot of good players in the team. There are a lot of successful players that have experienced success before; the Under 21s are coming in and they are hungry.
‘We have experience and quality in all age departments. We are a very well-conditioned team; Peter Donnelly has us in great shape. We genuinely feel that we are contenders.’
There is little doubt that Tyrone are genuine challengers, but he also knows that before they can move on, they must dig down into the root of that defeat to Mayo.
In his own mind, he has clarity on that much.
‘There is absolutely no doubt that we didn’t perform,’ he concedes.
‘You would never fault the team’s effort but there were times in that game – particularly in the first half – when there was more in us and we could’ve had a go at this game with a bit more abandonment but there are lessons to be learned from it.
‘If we got a second bite of the cherry back at Croke Park we might come up short but I’d like to think that we would throw ourselves in a bit more. But you could never fault the effort; it was a young team and there were lessons learned. It was a big year in their development and that game was just a massive lesson learned for everyone.’
Yet, he – and Peter Harte – are exempt from the criticism that they did not bring enough heat to Mayo. Donnelly set the tempo from the middle of the field in the first half with a scorching performance and three clinically taken points.
If others had followed his lead, they might just have grabbed the initiative but instead they were locked in a 0-7 apiece stalemate at half-time and the pervading sense was that Mayo had their claws embedded in the contest and were not going to let go.
Even so, Tyrone could still have wriggled free had Connor McAliskey profited from Donnelly’s sublime pass in the second half. His weak shot dribbled into goalkeeper David Clarke’s arms, though.
Donnelly’s only consolation was that his individual contribution was recognised with a second All-Star award and this week he has had the pleasure of the Dubai sun warming his back.
Even that consolation gong was in doubt when he was controversially black-carded in the first half of the Ulster final for a foul on Eoin McHugh that seemed devoid of cynical intent which the caution had been introduced to address.
It was one of a number of calls made under black card law last summer that has left the rule in a state of crisis and the reality that it will still be there next season does not sit well with Donnelly.
‘I was very, very aggrieved after it,’ he insists.
‘The black card was brought in to eradicate cynical play. There was not enough time for me to react cynically there, it happened so fast. It is too severe a punishment for any player that your game can end in a split second like that.
‘You should not be punished to that extent anyway and I would say the same about a few cases that hap-
There is absolutely no doubt that we didn’t perform against Mayo
pened after that like with Lee Keegan in the All-Ireland final. It is just very, very severe, especially that split-second decision for the referee,’ says the Trillick clubman.
But if the black card is to be removed, the disciplinary void it would leave would still need filling.
Donnelly is open-minded on that, but is convinced that anything is better than what is currently, in his view, misapplied. ‘There are a few ideas going about and the sin-bin is one of them. ‘It is hard to know, the game is so physically competitive now where you would start again if the black card was done away with. There are all sorts of things, the sin-bin, a 50-metre penalty and stuff like that as alternatives.
‘At the end of the day, a fellow who misses out in trying to make a legitimate tackle is getting the same as the fellow who strikes someone in the face. ‘Fellows are investing a lot of time in this just to be sent to the bench early on in games for minor stuff really.’
Still, it could have been worse. Losing their best player while playing the team that has haunted team this decade could have seen them fold, but instead they literally eye-balled Donegal to the end before eventually getting over the line. ‘We had to win that game,’ he admits. ‘It was well documented that Donegal had the upper hand over us and that was proven with results. ‘So we had to win that game. There are only so many times that you had keep going – we had to beat them at some stage and we did it that day on probably the biggest day that we met them. So that is really encouraging going forward.’
And that is the only place to go, but Donnelly knows that in doing so they have to set the target on delivering on all that potential. ‘You can’t put any definite dates on anything but there really is only so many years that you can be learning harsh lessons and at some stage you have to take them on board and look at them. ‘You might come up short, you have to go for the ultimate one; you have to throw everything you have into it to see where it takes you. You would rather go out knowing that you have put everything into it rather than having regrets afterwards. That is the only approach that you can take.’