HANDY TO HAVE
Star Seán hailed as ‘Dooher, Canavan and McGuigan rolled into one’
DECLOAKING after Championship games this summer, Tyrone players have been noticed sporting strange, almost bra-like upper-body apparel.
A little investigation has revealed they are GPS unit- holders for tracking the players’ various movements and contortions.
If they track heart rates too, then manager Mickey Harte could do worse than strap one on himself just to be on the safe side.
Because at times on Saturday evening, the three-time All-Irelandwinning boss admitted he was experiencing minor palpitations on the sideline. Overcoming Meath by two points in an often gripping Croke Park contest was, he claimed, ‘heart-attack stuff ’.
Thankfully for Harte and his Tyrone team, they had a midfielder in Seán Cavanagh who logged some serious mileage and did so with some game- defining scores and interventions along the way.
From a purist’s perspective, his eight points, including one kicked after a trademark sumptuous dummy, was enough to set the mind alight. For Harte — though he bristled afterwards at the inference of cynical play by his team — Cavanagh’s decision to haul down a Meath player on the way to a likely score late on, earning himself a yellow card, may have been just as crucial.
What Harte was happy to state was that in his long and storied Tyrone senior alliance with Cavanagh, which stretches back 10 years now, this was the Moy man’s finest game.
‘He was the outstanding player on the field,’ said Harte. ‘Probably as good as I’ve ever seen him play and I’ve seen him play lots.
‘It was absolute leadership. Whenever the team was struggling, he just broke the line. He took on the responsibility. He didn’t ask anything of the players. He said “look at me go”. That’s really what he did.
‘He was probably Brian Dooher and Peter Canavan and Brian McGuigan all rolled into one. He just did things that needed to be done and did them with authority and did them for the 70 minutes. That was the biggest thing of all.
‘Because the way he played in the first half, you thought, “He’ll never be able to stick this again for another 35 minutes”. But he did.
‘And his frees: a lot of the frees he took looked easy. And they were so crucial. That takes a lot of nerve as well.’
Cavanagh himself admitted after the round-three defeat of Kildare that it was all starting to feel a little like 2008 again. Back then, Tyrone blazed a Championship-winning trail through the qualifiers and Cavanagh ended up being named Footballer of the Year.
Stranger things have happened this season already than a repeat occurrence of both. Tyrone dealt impressively with a strong challenge from a lively Meath team on Saturday, particularly in the third quarter of the game when the Royals had fought back to lead.
They possessed a vital awareness of how to get the job done and approaching the business end of the season, that sort of knowledge is golden. Their reward for inflicting a first ever Championship win over Meath is a last- eight clash with Ulster champions Monaghan this Saturday evening at Croke Park.
Monaghan, of course, did what Tyrone couldn’t do — defeat Donegal in the Ulster Championship. ‘ Monaghan were more t han impressive against Donegal and if they produce that kind of form, probably what we did today against Meath wouldn’t be any good against it,’ said Harte.
‘So we’ll have to improve on all of our performances this year. Like, any [performance] we have played would not beat the Monaghan team I saw i n the Ulster f i nal l ast weekend.
‘They tackled with a great ferocity,’ he continued. ‘They smothered Donegal and didn’t let themselves be hurt where it mattered.
‘I suppose they also took Donegal’s key inside players out of the game in terms of scoring.
‘And they had a great target man themselves in Kieran Hughes. He was brilliant. In many ways, Conor McManus was the player being talked about before the game.
‘But it was a case of watch the cat and the mouse will bite you. That’s what happened because Kieran Hughes put in a man-of-the-match performance inside there and his fielding under pressure, his score kicking under pressure, to me he was the difference really. It gave Monaghan the opportunity to convert their possession into scores.’
Captain Stephen O’Neill forsook himself for Tyrone late on against Meath, earning a second yellow card to make sure they didn’t leak a game changing score.
It was that sort of a struggle throughout. Tyrone never quite shook Meath off despite moving 0-11 to 1-4 clear at half-time thanks to five points from Cavanagh.
The Royals were determined to show their solid Leinster final performance was no fluke and in Eamonn Wallace had an outstanding performer. The speedy 19-year- old hit 1-3, his seventh-minute goal giving him the inspiration to add three crucial points from play.
In attack with him, Mickey Newman registered 1-5 including a second-half penalty conversion that helped reel in the deficit.
But when it came to it, Tyrone just got their scores that little bit easier in the crucial final quarter of the game and won because of it.
‘One of the things we have achieved this year is we have reconnected the Meath people with the Meath team,’ said boss Mick O’Dowd.
‘People believe in this team again. That was an important step that had to be made. When we look back on the game, we’ll regret the first half to be honest. I know there was a slight breeze but we weren’t happy with ourselves.
‘There were a couple of chances in the second half that we could and should have taken as well. In fairness, Tyrone kicked 17 scores and we kicked 11. That was the difference.’