Opinion: That was one that got away

Analysis

Damien Donohoe

The Ulster Championship in terms of a spectacle is alive and well. We have now seen five games and three of them have been very entertaining battles and a notable jump in the standard we’ve witnessed in the leagues.

On Sunday, going to and arriving at Kingspan Breffni had a proper championship feeling to it with Cavan and Tyrone jerseys everywhere, sun shining and the High Stool Prophets building up the sense of occasion in the grounds.

Unfortunately, the day finished with disappointment as the result went Tyrone’s way by the narrowest of margins after 100 minutes of football. It was great to hear the Cavan support almost in full voice as the most of the near 10,000 spectators were in blue.

The volume hit levels we haven’t heard since before Covid at times when the lads went at Tyrone in the second half, and you could see the atmosphere giving the players energy.

While most people I’ve spoken to came away happy with the performance of the team, I have to be honest in my assessment and say I’m disappointed.

I really feel in time there will be regrets that we didn’t take a rare chance to get the better of Tyrone, who arrived with a team that we showed can be got at.

I can’t and won’t take away from the second half performance as it was just the way I love to see the team playing. We came from eight points behind to draw level and from there to the end, the game went like this.

One down to level, two down to one down, back to two down and then level. There were so many times the lads could have stayed on the canvas but battled to get back on their feet and kept swinging.

To tell the story of the game, the score totals of each period does it best. In the first half, we lost 1-4 to 1-10. In the second half, we won 2-10 to 0-10, while the first half of extra time we lost 0-1 to 0-2 and the second half was a point each. So, I believe it was the first half where the game was lost.

In that first half, we took 13 shots and came away with five scores (33%) while Tyrone took 15 shots and hit 11 (73%) so our efficiency in front of goal wasn’t at their level. The shots were on in most cases, but the execution wasn’t where it needed to be. For me that was just an indication of a bit too much caution or fear in the team.

I said the performance against Monaghan was brave but our first half against Tyrone wasn’t brave. We stood off Niall Morgan’s kick-out and allowed him time on the ball in open play which resulted in him providing the last or second last pass for at least three of Tyrone’s first-half scores.

Once the ball was thrown up, Oisin Kiernan (Castlerahan) came back to play as a sweeper which isn’t something we’ve seen the team do often under Raymond Galligan so far. I can understand the tactic and it made sense in theory given the firepower of the two Canavans and McCurry inside, but it didn’t work out as the trio finished with 13 points between them.

The other impact it had was it left a Tyrone defender free, which was Michael McKernan too often as he hit two points in the first half. Both those tactics gave off an air of fear or caution and it looked like it was an exercise to stay in the game.

There were still some moments in the first half where we really went at them on the attack. Brían O’Connell and Killian Brady’s points saw both of them bring real momentum as they gathered the ball to break the line and when cousins Conor and Oisin Brady exposed Darragh Canavan’s defensive weakness to set up Cian Madden for his goal, the signs were there that Tyrone had cracks.

Defensively, we didn’t get enough pressure on Tyrone players as they came into the scoring zone. Daly and McKernan’s first half points are ones that stand out as examples of a lack of intensity. We may have been overly worried about the full-forward line and as a result got drawn in deep which allowed Tyrone to have seven different scorers before half-time.

When we came out after the break, there was a different approach. It was man-for-man pressure all over the field with our forward line working hard to double up if a defender got his man held up.

We pushed up man-for-man on Morgan’s kick-outs and having lost or conceded all of the kick-outs in the first half, we won at least three of them in the second half.

Runs were being made ahead of the ball like when Cian Reilly draw Ciaran Daly away from Oisin Brady to leave him in a one-on-one which he converted into a point.

Niall Carolan ran at McCurry to pass to James Smith for a Paddy Lynch point and Ciaran Brady left his man to contest a Morgan kick-out, forcing McGeary to over-carry the ball.

For our second goal, the entire half-back line handled the ball inside the Tyrone 13-metre line before Faulkner hit the net. For Carolan’s goal, Paddy Lynch could have tapped the ball over the bar, but he sensed a goal chance and played in McLoughlin who could have taken a point also but bravely squared the ball to James Smith.

Smith’s desire to contest meant Morgan could only punch the ball into the path of Carolan and once Smith cleared the way, the goal was tucked away nicely.

The equaliser again was another example of guts as Ciaran Brady, with the ball on the wing, decided to go at the Tyrone defence to set up O’Connell to bring the game to extra time. Unfortunately, in extra time it looked like we reverted back to playing with a sweeper. In that additional period, Tyrone took seven shots, scoring three, while we took five shots, scoring two.

In the final second of extra-time with the two minutes of injury-time played, we won back possession. In a move that had eight passes and included a 40-metre solo run, we passed the ball laterally once and backwards four times. At that stage in the game, bodies are so far past the point of fatigue that it’s not easy to produce something magical but if the ball was brought inside the Tyrone 45, it would have been harder for David Coldrick to blow the full-time whistle.

On the referee, there are a couple of things that are noteworthy. When he issued Padraig Hampsey with a black card, the game clock on BBC showed 47:47 but the 10 minutes for the offence only starts after play resumes which was 49:13. Hampsey returned to the pitch on 58:20 when we were about to take a kick-out.

Also, with two-and-a-half minutes of injury-time played at the end of normal time, he gave a free to Cian Reilly after McKernan blocked his run.

Once he had given the free, he had to give a black card which would have seen Tyrone down to 14 right up to the seventh minute of first half extra time. It wasn’t Coldrick’s finest day but even with that in mind, we were still good enough to win the game.

I have said for some time now that we play better in chaos, but chaos maybe is the wrong word. It’s intensity and doing things as quickly as possible.

We tried in the first half to slow down Tyrone by playing the game slower and maybe Tyrone did the same in the second half but the pace of the game is controlled by the team that plays with the most intensity, not by the team that tries to slow it down.

It was a rollercoaster of a match and while disappointment is my overall emotion, you still have to be proud of so many aspects of the game. We saw again that when we play that fast attacking style and bring intensity, Cavan are a good side.

It’s a team we can all get behind and so we look forward to the All-Ireland series in a few weeks’ time.