Meath find themselves but Tyrone find a way
TYRONE 2-14 MEATH 0-19
IN the end, through a cocktail of fortune and fortitude, Tyrone found a way.
In doing so they reminded us that what separates the hard-nosed elite from the wannabees is that when a game is stripped down to kill or be killed, they have both the will and the know-how to stay alive.
We know this about Tyrone under Mickey Harte, because only three times in his 16-year reign has he seen him summer buried on the back-door circuit.
This was just another day when that was not going to happen, but they needed the bones of 100 minutes here to visit that reality on a Meath team, who will seek their comfort from a sense of pride restored.
They will feel, though, that their reward should have been more tangible in nature.
Their sense of injustice at the end of both 70 minutes and extra-time was raw and real.
With good reason too. An underwhelming secondhalf performance by Roscommon matchofficial Paddy Neilan had its lowest moment in the 63rd minute, when he ruled Kieran McGeary’s foul on Cillian O’Sullivan occurred outside the penalty zone.
Television picture confirmed what had already been obvious to the naked eye and a converted penalty – the sides were level at 1-9 to 0-12 at that stage – would have been match-defining. Instead, it left a window open and somehow Tyrone wriggled through it, even when it appeared to have slammed shut when they lost Tiernan McCann to a straight redcard in the 67th minute, when they trailed by a point. But it’s game like this that are character and season defining and Cathal McShane got his hands on leather in the final minute of regular play to split the posts to force this to extratime. After that, there was a sense of inevitability as to how this would roll as Tyrone rallied – the excellent Frank Burns leading the charge from centre-back where his contribution went beyond the two points he kicked – and in the sixth minute of extra-time, Ronan O’Neill sliced his way through the Meath defence to set up Harry Loughran for Tyrone’s second goal.
It would prove to be a match-winner but only just as Meath came from five down in extra-time to cut it to the bare minimum, before the Roscommon match official was centre-stage again.
In the final play of the game, Meath’s outstanding wing-back James McEntee appeared to be pushed in the back by McGeary, but Neilan this time did not whistle.
When the referee blew time he was met with such fire and fury from the pitch and the stands, he required a Garda escort from the pitch.
However, if Meath had reason to rue the decisions which went against them, Tyrone could counter by arguing that they should have this thing dead and buried by half-time, when instead they led by just two points (1-6 to 0-7)
They spurned two gilt-edged goal chances in the final five minutes of the half with Andrew Colgan diving full length to turn away Padraig McNulty’s 31st-minute, pile-driver of a shot.
But it was the miss on the stroke of half-time by the Conor McAliskey – who had a mixed evening scoring 1-8 but also kicking eight wides – that is likely to have cut deeper, after he was brilliantly picked out by Richard Donnelly, he
swivelled and saw his rasping effort come back off the crossbar.
Yet, those chances also contained the promise of more to come, and it wasn’t by accident either.
At the throw-in Tyrone started with just two thirds of the team that lined out in that two-point defeat to Monaghan, as Harte contentiously decided to give the nod to Michael O’Neill ahead of regular net-minder Niall Morgan.
Against Monaghan, when Tyrone were forced to go long on their restarts they were cleaned out around the middle – in truth that was more of a receivers issue than a goalkeeping one – but with O’Neill they went quicker to devastating effect.
In total, they secured 1-2 from short kick-outs in the first half – the crunch early goal coming in the seventh minute when a sweeping Tyrone move concluded with McAliskey firing through a forest of Meath legs to the net.
But in going short on restarts to engage their running game, Tyrone had identified a glaring weakness in Meath’s defensive armour; their failure to cope with the running game.
It is hard to figure how that threat dissipated in the second half, but it may just be that Meath took their inspiration from Conor McGill’s shuddering goal-saving hit on Cathal McShane in the 41st minute.
It was a tackle in keeping with a Meath performance when they tapped back into the identity which once made Meath a force to be reckoned with.
They were the better team for long swathes – totally dominating the battle for breaking ball in the middle where Bryan Fenton, McEntee, Cillian O’Sullivan and Ben Brennan excelled, until the latter’s afternoon ended with a double yellow card at the end of normal time.
It was a performance that deserved better, but teams like Tyrone have a healthy habit of making their own luck.