Ulster Senior Football Championship quarter-final: Tyrone 1-18 Monaghan 2-17
AMID Monaghan’s cast of brilliant thirty-somethings, it was the boldness of youth that won the day as Ryan O’Toole’s dramatic late goal saw the Farneymen dump Tyrone out of the Ulster Championship.
Darren McCurry punched the air after slotting over a score that looked to have edged the Red Hands across the line five minutes into added time, momentum at last wrestled back after a pulsating see-saw second half.
But Farney legs, even the aging ones among them, weren’t ready to wilt yet.
In his first Championship appearance, O’Toole drifted into space on the right of the square. After being found by Kieran Duffy, the sensible option was to fist it over and take the game into extra-time.
Safety first, though, wasn’t on the table.
The 23-year-old - just as he did when Monaghan sealed Division One survival in Mayo three weeks earlier – drove on and drilled low between Niall Morgan’s legs to the disbelief of most inside Healy Park.
It was a classic risk and reward moment, O’Toole’s bravery bringing a smile to the face of boss Vinny Corey and an entire county as they headed for home, eagerly anticipated a semi-final showdown with defending Ulster champions Derry on April 29.
“The goals were the turning point,” beamed Corey.
“Stephen O’Hanlon’s goal put us up for the first time and young Ryan O’Toole, if he had fisted it over the bar you would have said it was a good decision. But he went for it, which was brilliant.
“We did give them the licence before the game to take the risk. I knew as he was shaping up that he was going to go for it because he had scored one in Castlebar that cut in like that and it was exactly the same.
“I would have forgiven him for fisting it over the bar but he took it on and full credit to him on his Championship debut. The easiest thing was to take the safe option but he went for the goal and he deserved his reward.”
Corey was part of Seamus McEnaney’s backroom team when Monaghan lost out to Derry at the same stage last year and, even though the chase for Sam Maguire dominates the big picture, the Clontibret man is eagerly anticipating renewing their rivalry with Rory Gallagher’s men.
“We are missing a lot of players from last year - the team that played Derry last year isn’t available to us.
“It’s a great game for us to get because Derry are a well-oiled machine and for us to be looking at them for the next two weeks and playing that match and learning from it as much as we can, that will be massive for us later on in the year.
“The learning we will take from it will be massive but the reality is that there’s another competition, a bigger competition coming down the tracks. You’re preparing for that all the time.”
Tyrone, who led by five at half-time, won’t be out again until the end of May – and joint manager Brian Dooher insisted Ulster Championship ambitions had been first and foremost in Red Hand minds.
“Well, we have that, but we regard today as the real Championship… it’s very disappointing to exit the way we did, we have a chance to reset and go again.
“In the second half they played the majority of the game. We were reacting to what was happening. And it just wasn’t good enough, we were inviting extra pressure on us because of that.
“We didn’t handle it well.”
