MICKEY BREWS UP A PERFECT STORM
Red Hands weigh in on their Sam credentials with a devastating defeat of their old foes Armagh
THE DAY before the 2003 All-Ireland final between Tyrone and Armagh, Mickey Harte added up the weight of the entire Armagh team and compared it to his own Tyrone side.
The general belief was that Armagh, the All-Ireland holders at the time, were bigger and stronger and would dominate the physical stakes yet the actual difference between the two groups was just seven ounces.
Harte weighed out that measly figure in coffee granules at the team’s hotel base and showed it to his players: ‘Would that bully you? Would that knock you out of the way?’
As he recalled in his autobiography, ‘The players were amazed’ at the reality versus the myth and duly relieved Armagh of the Sam Maguire Cup the following day with a powerful performance.
Maybe they’ll end this year with the cup back in their trophy cabinet and maybe Harte delivered another of those rousing ‘game of inches’ style speeches before yesterday’s game because they simply steamrolled their old adversaries.
Armagh didn’t come into the contest with anything like the reputation they had ahead of that 2003 final, but they were still expected to make a game of it after navigating the qualifiers. It was for that reason that the southbound carriage of the M1 saw the sort of tailbacks and logjams yesterday morning and afternoon normally reserved for pre-Christmas traffic travelling in the opposite direction.
Yet their race was effectively run by the quarter-hour mark when they trailed by 1-5 to 0-0. Their former attacker Steven McDonnell stated in an interview before the game that the two Ulster counties always brought the best out in each other during the 2000s, with just a point separating them over three epic encounters in 2005.
This was an entirely one-sided contested though as Tyrone started strong, put clear daylight between the teams and suffocated Kieran McGeeney’s men with their carefully-thought-out counter-attacking strategy.
Jamie Clarke’s difficulties summed up Armagh’s afternoon. The Crossmaglen forward came into the contest off arguably his best-ever performance for the county when he pulled the strings against Kildare in the final round of qualifiers.
His early contributions here included being dispossessed with a run towards the Tyrone goals in the 10th minute, a wasteful kick that allowed Tyrone to launch a counter attack that ended in a Seán Cavanagh point and then a poor wide. Cathal McCarron picked up Clarke and did an excellent job though Tyrone’s entire defence was miserly to say the least, conceding just two points from play in the first half and only five in the entire game. Former Armagh defender Enda McNulty said before the game that ‘having nothing to lose is always a dangerous formula’ and suggested an upset could happen. But this was classic Tyrone, at their ruthless best, parking 15 men behind the ball when necessary and surging forward at pace then to pick off the scores that sucked the life out of the game. Armagh struggled to gain any sort of foothold in the game as Tyrone dominated the possession stakes with a well rehearsed style. McGeeney’s men didn’t help themselves with a number of errors. Goalkeeper Blaine Hughes tried a short kick-out in the 15th minute that Cavanagh got his hand to, allowing Peter Harte to pick up possession and feed Bradley.
The Killyclogher dynamo raced through on goal but was hauled down by James Morgan who picked up a yellow card. Even greater punishment was in store as Harte fired the resulting penalty to the corner of the net for a 1-5 to 0-0 lead.
Declan McClure was a late addition to the Tyrone team, replacing David Mulgrew – he was to have his say on that later – and lining out alongside Colm Cavanagh at midfield.
McClure took a point from what was another goal chance for Tyrone and Seán Cavanagh and Harte provided further scores to leave the Red Hands sitting pretty at the break, 1-8 to 0-4.
Tyrone needed a miracle in the second half but it never arrived. Instead, Tyrone restarted with points from Niall Morgan and Bradley to stretch their lead.
Mulgrew came on in the 44th minute and wasted little time in letting his manager know that he should have started.
He scored a cracking goal in the 55th minute when, under pressure from a couple of Armagh backs and closing in on the goals, he got a shot away to the net.
Eight minutes later he took a leaf out of Owen Mulligan’s book, feigning a hand pass to his left before kicking right-footed to the Armagh net. Mulgrew’s smile as he raced away summed up the impudence of the strike.
Cathal McCarron got a second booking late on for Tyrone though Armagh also finished with 14 men after Rory Grugan’s 65th-minute black card, their third on an afternoon they will want to file to a folder marked “To Forget”.