Tyrone need to tighten up at the back, says Mattie Donnelly

By Francis Mooney

Tyrone forwards Mattie Donnelly has warned Dublin will ruthlessly punish the sort of goal chances the Ulster men coughed up against Roscommon.

The Rossies netted twice at Croke Park as concentration levels dipped, but there was never any danger of the Connacht men catching a rampant Red Hand side.

The stakes will be much higher at Healy Park on Saturday, when one mistake could make all the difference.

A fascinating clash between Tyrone and the All-Ireland champions will be played out in front of a capacity crowd which will witness the first ever Championship meeting between the counties.

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“One thing that Dublin are very good at is being clinical and scoring goals. They obviously take massive, massive energy from it, so we can’t be giving them away so softly as we did (against Roscommon), there’s no doubt about that,” said Donnelly.

Tyrone’s counter-attacking last weekend was at times breathtaking, the quality of their finishing of the highest quality as they chalked up a massive 4-24 scoreline.

But the challenge facing Tyrone on Saturday will demand greater intensity and discipline as they seek to eliminate unforced errors.

“There were elements of our play we weren’t happy with. We would have taken the seven points lead at half-time, we always back ourselves to keep going to the final whistle, with the subs we have.

So we were happy with the seven points gap, and we capitalised on that in the second half, but still we gave them a few lines of options in the second half that we wouldn’t be happy about.