Carr: We just couldn't score

Poor shooting and an inability to convert chances into scores cost Cavan dearly, stated manager Tom Carr after the match. "I was very happy with the first 20 minutes, very happy with the commitment and very happy with some of the tackling, some of the movement," stated Carr when asked if any positives could be drawn from the match. "The biggest thing was that we couldn't get a score. You're talking about 14 scoring opportunities, give or take missing a few, we were good for nine or ten points tonight. We just couldn't put the ball between the posts. "We had more possession than Tyrone in the first half, we won more breaking ball, more clean ball in the middle but we couldn't score. The Tyrone side, Carr said, may have had an experimental look to it but possessed no shortage of proven talent. "I think they had a very good experimental team, a lot of players with under 21 All Ireland medals and minor All Ireland medals so there was a big difference between themselves and ourselves. They had Stephen O'Neill, Joe McMahon... I think they had a very strong team out tonight and I wouldn't be surprised to see 10 or 11 of those guys playing championship football," said Carr. The focus all along, he insisted, was the National League opener away to Roscommon in two weeks' time. "Our D-Day to be quite honest is February 7, it always was. We've scoured the county looking for talent, we've gone through 60 or 70 players at this stage," he said. Tyrone manager Mickey Harte, meanwhile, admitted that he had expected a stiffer challenege from Cavan. "They obviously had a good encounter with Donegal and Donegal only beat them by two points. I was surprised they lost to St Mary's because I felt they would have been physically too strong for them so that was a bit of a doubt. Of course it wasn't the full Cavan side, they were missing a few players so there was a degree of experimentation going on," said the three-time All Ireland senior winning bainisteoir. "We wanted to win comfortably. If you are trying to win a game and hanging on by a couple of points it cane be easy to lose it so we had to try to build up a lead and when we did that it becomes very difficult for the opposition to come back." Harte stated that he was glad to see his team taking the McKenna Cup seriously. "We said we wanted to be in this competition as long as possible and we owe it to everyone to take it seriously. I've been disappointed in the last few years that we weren't making the latter stages and I'm definitely very happy to be back in the semi-final." "I'm glad the players are taking it seriously as well, we're in a decent position but it's early in the season."