Éamonn Fitzmaurice: Brian Dooher and Feargal Logan already rewriting Tyrone’s playbook

Watching Tyrone at the moment is fascinating

Sun, 16 May, 2021 - 20:45

I always feel early-season games, regardless of significance or result, can give a good indication of the way that a management will want their team to play.

Those management and player discussions that took place over the longest winter will have informed the decisions made with regard to the approach for the 2021 season.

While allowing for the truncated pre-season the patterns that are emerging are what teams have been working on and what they believe can progress their development.

The real enjoyment in coaching is then tweaking as you go, realising what works and building on that and also accepting what doesn’t work and binning that. Stubbornness and pragmatism will be needed in equal measure when deciding to stick or twist.

This is why watching Tyrone at the moment is fascinating.

What changes are Brian Dooher and Feargal Logan trying to implement to help take Tyrone on a couple of steps in terms of their progression? Trying to implement a sea change may be challenging but I still think teams with designs around winning the All-Ireland in the next few seasons have to be ambitious. I have heard a lot of commentaries that the pre-season and season are too short to implement significant changes to gameplans. I disagree. As Henry Ford famously said: “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you always got.”

By that logic, the only team that can afford to stand still are Dublin and rest assured they will be looking to improve and evolve. Managements need to be courageous and move forward with the big picture in mind. Even if it is costly in the short term a clear vision of success is needed to win big. Tyrone tried some new things on Saturday evening in Healy Park.

The two aspects that stood out most for me were their initial tackling area and their movement of the ball. In the last few years when they lost possession, they withdrew en masse, at pace to an allocated slot and tackled as a group from there. Under Dooher and Logan they are tackling further up the field and allowing more one-on-one situations all over the pitch. This is a significant change and will take time to embed. The reason they are shifting was illustrated by Conor Meyler’s point in the first half. A combination of Richie Donnelly, Conor McKenna, Michael O’Neill and Meyler forced Donegal into a turnover 30 metres from goal which Meyler converted.

That type of turnover that far up the field was not happening in the recent past. Niall O’Donnell’s point for Donegal shortly afterwards was a perfect example of how it is still a work in progress. Tyrone had seven players inside the Donegal 20 metre line as they pressed for another turnover. However, they were too flat and one kick pass took all of them out thus leaving them wide open. They will realise that they should have staggered their tackling line better and will learn from this.

They will also get to understand that decision-making comes into it also. There are times to go for the jugular and there are times where the percentage play is to keep on your own defensive side of the ball.

This is the natural evolution of any new system as to implement it, often it needs to be extreme initially and then bit by bit it can be peeled back.

This is especially true for Tyrone, who for years have been doing the opposite. When O’Neill was sent off early in the second half it was harder for them to continue tackling like this so we will see how this progresses over the next few games.

The other thing that they are trying to do is kick the ball more. They moved the ball well at times and got scores from this approach particularly in the first half.

O’Neill and McKenna both got good scores in the first quarter from accurate ball kicked up the field. Donegal reacted by getting Hugh McFadden to sit in front of the full back line for a spell and he mopped up a few loose deliveries. Again, this will form part of the change in style, doing it when it’s on but not forcing it when it’s not.

Paul Donaghy’s performance was also a major positive and Niall Morgan’s sweeping role was interesting. I particularly enjoyed him pushing up the field late on to win a Donegal kickout when they were pressing Shaun Patton. We will see how this develops but I have felt for a few years that this ‘fly goalie’ style will become more and more prominent.

As well as those few work-ons they will also look to improve their discipline close to goal this week. Dooher and Logan when analysing their own performance may wonder why they didn’t introduce Darragh Canavan earlier. He brought a bit of fizz to the attack but didn’t have enough time to really test the tiring Donegal defenders.

When involved in management, every day is a school day. What will annoy Dooher and Logan most this week will be the lack of performance from some of their leaders. Mattie Donnelly, Peter Harte and Conor McKenna will be disappointed with their contributions. While it is all well and good implementing tactical changes the players still need to perform, particularly the leaders. As his team casually strolled off the pitch at half-time Dooher barked at them to get off the pitch quicker. He, I imagine wanted to see more intent in their body language and evidently the players are still trying to catch up to his expectations.

From the Donegal perspective, it wasn’t obvious to me if they were trying anything significantly different. They played well and had plenty of good performances all over the field from Patton, Neil McGee, McFadden, Ciarán Thompson, Patrick McBrearty, Peadar Mogan and Jamie Brennan. I imagine their main area of concern from the last two seasons is building the consistency that ensures they don’t come up short on the biggest days.

In contrast to Tyrone, all of their central players were good. Their main man was once again Michael Murphy. He looks trim, fit and hungry. I felt he struggled for form during the 2020 Ulster Championship and that probably fuelled his flames all through the winter. He scored well, won kickouts, tackled hard and gave his usual high level of leadership, which will only be missed once he finishes.

McBrearty and Brennan’s form will also help free him up a bit which will allow him to continue to significantly influence matters.

Donegal’s biggest challenge this year remains routinely delivering this type of performance. The raw materials are there to challenge but they have to eliminate the lacklustre displays on the knockout days. Another Ulster derby against Monaghan in Ballybofey next weekend is a good place to continue on their journey towards consistency and championships.