Red Hand to rule as Down lack momentum

ULSTER SFC PRELIMINARY ROUND:

I doubt Tyrone’s ambitions this time of year have changed much since they first started to dream more than a decade ago. The aim in the middle of May ever since then has been to get to Croke Park in autumn and to secure the ultimate prize once there.

This year is no different.

During the spring, they’ve taking a tanking (against Kerry), been unlucky to lose (against Dublin), been lucky to win (against Kildare) and been absolutely mesmeric (against Mayo), so we still don’t know for certain if Tyrone’s annual ambition is consistent with the reality on the ground.

The ambition is based on recent tradition and belief but the reality is that Tyrone gave starts to an awful lot of average players in the past few months and found that they weren’t up to championship football.

The biggest curiosity ahead of the clash with Down in Omagh tomorrow is whether or not the team will persist with their emphasis on attack or if they will be asked to revert to the more established defensive systems that served them so well in the past.

As an Ulster team, they don’t have the same gap between league and championship as others, such as Kerry, and the correlation between late league and early championship form is more defined. If we look closely enough at their last league game against Dublin we get some indication of what Mickey Harte and his management group are working on.

It was only after they had conceded three early goals that we saw what Tyrone might bring to the championship table this year. Having been nine points down at one stage, they managed to do what they did best for the last decade and stopped Dublin’s momentum by tackling even harder and producing unexpected bursts of brilliance. It was a reminder Tyrone are still among the best at limiting the damage done when momentum is going against.

Little wonder then that Seán Cavanagh felt confident enough to challenge the perceived wisdom and proclaim with a certain conviction this week that they are not a million miles away from Dublin’s level.

If Tyrone stick to their guns as regards the attacking style and persist with some of the better young players they had during the league, I believe they will be rewarded in the long term if they get to Croke Park beyond the August weekend. They are certainly the best equipped of the main contenders in Ulster (Derry, Donegal and Monaghan being the others) to have a go at capsizing Dublin.

The problem from a Tyrone viewpoint is that I believe it could take more than just tomorrow’s match to arrive at their best line up. If they play as selected on paper, I’d have concerns about Barry Tierney in the corner and despite having played some of his best football at centre back during the games against Dublin and Kildare, I’d still prefer to see Mattie Donnelly at either centre or full-forward, where he excelled when scoring five points from play against three different opponents in the first half against Mayo.

Midfield has been an area of concern for a while now and though Colm Cavanagh and Conor Clarke offer something in terms of presence, they can sometimes play too similar a style of game to be effective as a partnership.

The inside line of McCurry, McKenna and Coney is brimful of potential but that is all it is at this point — potential. Ronan and Stephen O’Neill will be missed but if any of the attacking sextet aren’t performing Tyrone have at least three different substitutes that can bring three different qualities to the mix: Mark Donnelly brings work-rate and thrusting runs, Conor McAliskey a bit of craft near the goal, and Emmett McKenna has blinding pace if the space opens up in front of him. That has to count for something.

James McCartan, as Down manager, can only yearn for such riches. His former playing colleague, Conor Deegan hit the nail on the head during the week suggesting that Down simply don’t have the playing resources of other counties and losing one or two key men over the course of a season would devastate them.

Of course he has a point, but what happened to the audacity and the swagger we associate with all Down teams, irrespective of available talent? The downbeat note being struck by Benny Coulter when decrying the defensive nature of the modern game only adds to the doom and gloom.

And yet on paper Down appear to have just as many attacking aces as Tyrone have. A forward unit of McGinn, Poland (surely the most undervalued player in Ulster), McKernan, O’Hare, Madine and Coulter would trouble most defences, not to mind a back six in which a converted forward, Peter Harte, is the most experienced player and another converted forward, Mattie Donnelly, is the most composed.

But back to that word momentum again.

I think it was former Down star Seán O’Neill who expressed doubt at the start of the 2010 about Down’s prospects of winning an All-Ireland before adding prophetically that “momentum builds quickly in Down squads”. They may have fell short in that year’s final, but we all know after 2010 how quickly a bonfire can catch flame in the Mourne County.

It is worth noting too that no team in their division scored more goals than Down in this year’s league, and only champions Monaghan conceded fewer. They got a good deal right during the course of spring and were the only team to take points off the top two teams.

But rarely since that breakthrough season four years ago, have they been able to field their desired team and once again tomorrow, talk will be about who isn’t available as much as who is.

With Tyrone on their home patch and Down struggling for momentum, I can only see one winner.