Shattered Tyrone learn size does matter

EVERYTHING in a losing dressing-room resonates with defeat, especially at this stage of summer. The half-empty Lucozade bottles, the banana skins lying around are just reminders that this was a place where dreams were shattered.

The Tyrone team beat a hasty retreat to the team bus, the players, normally a lively gaggle of youthfulness, are silent and despondent. It is left to Art McRory to sift through the shards of a broken summer.

For 25 minutes yesterday, Tyrone looked like an unstoppable juggernaut. Stephen O'Neill and Peter Canavan were scoring, seemingly, at will. Everything they touched turned to gold. And then, it all disintegrated.

The disbelieving Tyrone crowd looked on as their team simply fell apart, their play lost the controlled coherency, O'Hara and Paul Durkan started mopping up around the centre of the field and Art McRory saw his dream of taking the Sam Maguire to Omagh vanish before his very eyes.

"What can I say, we were nine-three up, we were cruising and it just all fell apart," McRory says, probably trying to make sense of it all himself. All credit to Sligo, the better team won on the day. To come back from such a margin is a great achievement."

He had a few words about John Bannon. Not criticism, exactly, just observation. In the end, Tyrone's size came back to haunt them. They just don't have big men up among the Red Hands. Sligo do. Lack of physical power was a problem they couldn't over-come.

"After the Derry game, I spoke very highly of the way Brian White handled the game, I thought he deserved a lot of credit for the style of refereeing. I think we weren't helped by John Bannon's style of refereeing. "Our lack of physical strength suffered because of the refereeing style and that became more and more apparent as the game went on. It is not a criticism as such, the way the match was refereed allowed for physical strength to dominate and that didn't suit us. It was probably the decisive factor in our defeat.

"We weren't able to ship heavy challenge after heavy challenge. It is not a complaint, because there wasn't a dirty tackle in the game, but it did favour the bigger side."

It has always been the big failing of Tyrone football, lack of physical power. McRory scratches his head as he is asked what he can do about it. "It is something we are going to have to work on, but I don't honestly know how you can change that.

"The only thing I can say is that we are a young team and this is going to be a great experience for all of them. Perhaps, we are a little too young, certainly when we went into that big lead, we let a bit of complacency slip into our game".

Still, he has no complaints. The better team won. "You have to hand it to Sligo, they had four chances for goal before they got their goal. That says it all. And we had some players who didn't perform to the levels they are capable of."

And what of the future for this scholarly master of Tyrone football. "The immediate future, well there is a club championship to start in Tyrone, we will get back together and see where we go from here."