'We’re just concentrating on ourselves' - Late winner gives Tyrone momentum as All-Ireland race whittles down
MOMENTUM: Tyrone's Darren McCurry celebrates his score. Pic: ©INPHO/Tom O’Hanlon.
We feel it’s worth pointing out that Tyrone have won the All-Ireland the only previous two times they managed to beat Mayo. A small sample size, granted, but this Round 2A win was of the sort to make you think they could be on to something again.
A game that could have gone either way, true, but Tyrone now find themselves in the last eight.
Sam Callinan could have put his foot through the ball and gone for goal rather than a point when put through on Niall Morgan in the dying minutes. Referee Brendan Cawley might not have pinged Aidan O’Shea for the foul that set Morgan up for the winning two-point free.
Darren McCurry’s second point, with 23 minutes to go, probably should have been signalled wide. Mayo might have managed more than just the one goal scored by the impressive Darragh Beirne after 54 minutes. So many sliding doors but...
This was Tyrone’s second win on the trot and that’s something after the yo-yo summer they put in when making the semis this time last year. And the loss they started with in Ulster came at the hands of Armagh by a single score after extra-time.
That difficult spring seems like a lifetime ago now.
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This win came on the back of an extraordinary weekend with two of Ulster’s big guns spiked at least temporarily thanks to Cork’s sacking of Ballybofey and Louth’s late, late sucker punch of Armagh in Inniskeen.
Just another reason for the Red Hand to believe maybe?
“Yeah, to be honest with you we’re not even looking at any of those games or passing any remarks,” said Tyrone manager Malachy O’Rourke. “We’re just concentrating on ourselves and that’s the way we’ve looked at it since the start of the championship.
“We have two weeks to prepare now, we know we are far from the finished article but that we are improving so we will try and improve again over the next couple of weeks and whoever we get we get.” It’s still a tad premature to be going to the hustings for a Tyrone title at Sam but this was a full-one examination of theirs and Mayo’s credentials on a scorching hot Sunday in front of 11,921 people at Healy Park where the stories started early.
It started with the Allianz issue returning centre stage, the county board’s communications committee and Omagh St Enda’s refusing to handle the official programmes and an enormous banner unfurled on the terrace behind one of the goals.
Nine times the two sides drew level over the 70 minutes with Tyrone twice taking a three-point lead midway through the second period. That’s as much as there was between them all afternoon. They were level at eight points apiece at the break.
Tyrone probably had the better of the midfield exchanges but Mayo will rue the inability to make more of a handful of very decent scoring chances, especially when they were so much tighter in that regard at the back than in previous games.
“We had seen Mayo against Monaghan and particularly in the first-half they were really good,” said O’Rourke. “We knew if we gave them space that they have quality forwards so there were a number of things there that we had to close down.
“We did it well at times, other times we gave them too much space. We always thought it would come down to the last ten minutes and that’s the way it turned out. I’m just delighted that we showed great leadership and great courage and composure towards the end to get them couple of scores and hold on.”
It was absorbing from the start with both of them playing a direct and open brand of the game and if McCurry and Ronan Cassidy’s four points stood out for Tyrone then the return after injury late on of Darragh Canavan shouldn’t be overlooked.
Like Kerry, Tyrone have a handful of casualties that will benefit from the extra weekend before they go out again in a quarter-final. Mayo will have to regroup for their Round 3 appointment next weekend.
O’Rourke was pleased with that.
“The first thing is that you know you are straight through to the quarter-final. If you weren’t there is a lot of jeopardy there, you might not come through it. The team that comes through next weekend might find that a benefit in that they are match-hardened.
“With the injuries we have and after a tough game like that we’re delighted to get the extra week and hopefully it will stand to us.”
D McCurry (0-6, 2 frees); R Cassidy (0-4); N Morgan (0-3, a 2-pt free and 1 ‘45’); C Daly, P Teague and C Kilpatrick (all 0-2); E Jordan (0-2, 1 free and 1 ‘45’); E McElholm.
D Beirne (1-2); R O’Donoghue (0-5, 3 frees); K McDonald (0-3); J Carney (0-2 ptr); E Hession (0-2); S Callinan, P Durcan, J Flynn and T Conroy (all 0-1).
N Morgan; C Quinn, P Teague, J Clarke; M McKernan, N Devlin, K McGeary; B Kennedy, C Kilpatrick; S O’Donnell, R Cassiday, C Daly; E McElholm, M Donnelly, E Jordan.
D McCurry for Jordan (46); F Burns for McGeary (55-65); C Bogue for Daly and L McGarrity for Donnelly (both 60); D Canavan for Cassidy (67).
J Livingstone; J Coyne, D McHugh, E Hession; S Callinan, D McBrien, P Durcan; E McGreal, J Carney; H O’Loughlin, C Loftus, J Flynn; D Beirne, R O’Donoghue, K McDonald.
T Conroy for O’Loughlin (45); P Towey for Loftus (48); A O’Shea for Durcan (53).
B Cawley (Kildare).
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