Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Margin not half what it used to be: Mattie
MATTIE DONNELLY believes Tyrone have closed the gap on Dublin by more than the six points they trimmed off last year’s All-ireland semi-final losing margin.
This time it was halved from the 12 points they separated the sides in 2017, but Donnelly feels the Red Hands are closer than that.
“I definitely think that the gap between us and Dublin has now been closed by more than half,” said the Tyrone captain. “We’re starting to get into a template as to how we can play.
“But again there’s two big things of game management and shot conversion that we really need to address.
“There’s a lot of development within this team during the past year and I’ve no doubt that it will be maintained. All the players are at a good age, and committed to learning. I always believe in the players.”
The Trillick man is struggling to come to terms with the pain of falling short at Croke Park last Sunday.
“It’s utterly, utterly devastating and so hard to take. We started the game exactly the way that we intended to do. I suppose our old bogey of shot selection and shot conversion kind of killed a bit of our momentum.
“Then there was the massive call from the referee for the penalty. Obviously that also stopped us in our tracks, but this is still a massive learning curve for us as a team.
“It’s clear that our shot selection and conversion can really go up. Even dealing with momentum changes a bit better is something to look at as well and both things would make a massive difference to us.”
And when Dublin got their noses in front, with the help of two first half goals, they showed they are masters in the art of defending a lead.
“If you give them a seven-point gap then it’s always going to be very hard to get back and we knew that. But then we said that in the first 15 or 20 minutes we were more than seven points the better team than them so there was no reason why we couldn’t do that in the second half.”
All the players are at a good age and committed..