Cassidy: We’ll play Tyrone at own game

DONEGAL will attempt to beat Tyrone at their own game when the sides meet in the Ulster semi-final later this month.

Having played a more traditional ‘15 on 15’ and off the cuff style of football in recent times, the 1992 All-Ireland champions have now knuckled down under a more systematic and defensively sound system under Jim McGuinness in 2011.

The rewards have been obvious. Promotion to Division One of the league suggested a spring well spent and they have built on those foundations with comfortable championship victories against Antrim and Cavan. It isn’t an approach that has met with much acclaim but Donegal won little aside from admirers the last decade or so despite a stable full of talented players and a freewheeling approach to big championship occasions.

Change was required.

“The last couple of times we played Tyrone we just went out and played them,” said defender Kevin Cassidy. “We were hoping our footballing ability would take us through but we were coming up against a team with a system, a strategy and tactics. We were just playing off the cuff. We have learned from the hammerings Tyrone gave us. We were just going out and playing our three full-backs against three full-forwards, our three half-backs against three half-forwards. These guys are just unbelievable athletes and scoring machines and if you give them that much space they’ll just destroy you.”

Tyrone’s greying profile has been discussed yet Cassidy is in no doubt but that Mickey Harte’s side remains the market leader in Ulster, “the benchmark” which all others must reach to claim the Anglo-Celt Cup.

Tyrone’s tactics hardly met with universal acclaim when they emerged as a force back in 2003 but Cassidy, who described their style as ‘poetry in motion’, is a fan. The last championship meeting between the sides was an Ulster semi-final in Clones four years ago when Donegal entered the game as NFL champions and on the back of a win over their bogey boys from Armagh but lost by 11 points.

That said, they never feared Tyrone as they once did Armagh who beat them in three Ulster finals inside four years. Donegal took their scalp when Tyrone were All-Ireland champions in 2004 and they have won four of the seven league meetings this past ten years.

Cassidy continued: “We’re always confident in our own ability and confident that we have good players in our squad and can match anybody on our day but once in a blue moon is no good. Tyrone are consistent. We might beat them here or there but you have to be consistent and we’d be confident we are in good shape physically and mentally.”

But he warned: “There’s a lot of things we have to work on (after Sunday’s win over Cavan) and get ready for the big one in two weeks. We kicked away a lot of silly possession (on Sunday). We left a lot of space so we have to analyse that. You can’t give boys like Stephen O’Neill or Owen Mulligan space like that or they’ll tear you apart.”