Cork leak goals as Tyrone sneak home

THE journey home will have taken Cork the best part of six hours and Conor Counihan was probably still trying to figure out quite how his team had just fallen to their first defeat of the season as they slipped into Leeside.

Score 16 points and a manager is entitled to take a win for granted, but a cocktail of problems – some self-imposed, others less so – conspired against the visitors at Healy Park where Tyrone finally got off the mark.

Chief among them, of course, was the concession of three goals for the second time this season. Cork have now shipped seven in their first four games and Counihan conceded such a statistic is a worry.

It probably isn’t any coincidence Cork are missing Alan Quirke, Anthony Lynch, Graham Canty and John Miskella. With that quartet on board last season, they let in only six in 15 outings. Add in the absence of Eoin Cadogan and Ger Spillane – as well as Nicholas Murphy up front – not to mention Tyrone’s hunger for a first win and it was always going to be a searching test.

Like most of their recent games, this was one where the momentum lurched violently from side to side, like one of those fight sequences in a ‘Rocky’ movie, and it was Tyrone who were ahead when the credits rolled. It was rough justice on a Cork side that dominated for long spells and played more of the good football, even if Counihan waved away plaudits for their performance by pointing out that it is a “results business”.

It all started to go wrong with a minor accident in Omagh’s Saturday evening traffic which held the bus up for a good hour and saw the Munster champions finally pull into the ground just 45 minutes before the throw-in. In fairness to Counihan, he didn’t make a meal of it. “I wouldn’t want to be making excuses,” he said later. “We got our opportunities. This is sport at a high level and these are minor things. You just get on with it.”

The fact remains, however, Cork were uncharacteristically sluggish at the start, falling 0-4 to 0-1 in arrears after a dozen minutes, and they were in trouble at both ends of the pitch.

But then came the first of the twists and turns. Pearse O’Neill and Alan O’Connor began to lord it at midfield and the scores began to flow like gravy. With Cork’s six-shooters finding their rhythm and Paudie Kissane bombing forward, they reeled off eight points. Two of them could have been goals but Daniel Goulding’s miss on the half hour was the standout chance. Memories of Liverpool’s Ronnie Rosenthal at Villa Park all those years ago came to mind when the Éire Óg man hit the crossbar and it proved to be the game’s defining moment.

Conor Gormley stopped the rot for Tyrone with a point – their first score in 22 minutes – and they followed that with a double whammy of goals from Colm Cavanagh and Tommy McGuigan.

All in the space of three minutes.

Cavanagh’s was a beautiful dink over goalkeeper Ken O’Halloran’s head while McGuigan followed it up with another three-pointer from a rebound.

“We probably didn’t believe the position we were in at half-time given where we were five or six minutes earlier,” Mickey Harte admitted, “but there is great belief in these men.”

That belief was sorely tested on the restart when Cork again cut loose with five rapid points but the most significant moment of the third quarter was the introduction of Sean Cavanagh for his first appearance of the season. Tyrone perked up on his arrival and they were level with almost 20 minutes to go, the in-form Owen Mulligan squaring matters with the last of his three points on the night.

And on they went, trading blows.

Some loose play from the Ulster side allowed substitute John Hayes and Goulding to reconstruct a two-point buffer but then Cork’s newest Achilles heel came back to hamper them once again.

Aidan Cassidy, who was superb in the last quarter, burst forward from the middle and, though O’Halloran blocked his shot, Ryan Mellon was on hand to bury the rebound to the net.

A Martin Penrose free left two between them but Cork failed to recover for a third time. Four squandered opportunities either sailed wide or fell short into Jonathan Curran’s grateful arms.

The final act was a straight red card for Donncha O’Connor, penalised for lashing out at Cassidy who was clearly impeding him. Harsh was Counihan’s verdict. He could well have been talking about the result.

Scorers for Tyrone: T McGuigan 1-1, R Mellon 1-0, C Cavanagh 1-0, O Mulligan 0-3, M Penrose 0-2f, D Harte 0-1, C Gormley 0-1, Shaun O’Neill 0-1.

Scorers for Cork: C O’Neill 0-5 (3f), P Kerrigan 0-3, D Goulding 0-3, P O’Neill 0-2, P Kissane 0-1, D O’Connor 0-1, J Hayes 0-1.

Subs for Tyrone: Shaun O’Neill for Gormley 38, S Cavanagh for Donnelly 42, C McCullagh for McCusker 50, R Mellon for Mulgrew 50.

Subs for Cork: J Hayes for O’Neill 55, C O’Driscoll for O’Regan 65, F Goold for O’Flynn 69.

Referee: D Coldrick (Meath).