Mickey Harte happy as Tyrone adapt to defeat Queen's

TYRONE boss Mickey Harte was pleased by how his players adapted to both the playing and refereeing conditions in order to cruise to victory over Queen's.

The Red Hands laboured early on in their Bank of Ireland Dr McKenna Cup opener, struggling to score as they repeatedly ran into opposing defenders. Indeed the student side led by five points to one after 14 minutes, but the hosts then turned the game around completely to win by 15 points in Healy Park.

Harte pointed to several factors for that transformation, saying: "As the game went on we began to reach the work levels we wanted to; we wouldn't have been happy with the first 15, 20 minutes, for sure. Something had to change.

"The real thing that changed was that you have to judge what's going on in a game, what attracts a free and what doesn't. We found that to our cost, at times we thought we were going to get frees and we weren't getting them.

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"It probably took the players 15, 20 minutes to adjust to that fact and when they adjusted to that then we knew more what to do with the ball, not to carry it into the tackle just as much was we were doing in the first 15, 20 minutes."

The home players also took note of the heavy pitch conditions, including water lying in patches, which impressed Harte too:

"That's good, players do now realise that winter football is not a time for bouncing the ball. Even though it's a habit of some players, they like to bounce the ball, and it's a good thing to do on nice summer ground, they had to be more thoughtful today and not bounce the ball too much.

"Sometimes if you'd bounced the ball there it wouldn't come up at all, never mind come up at a bad angle. They did adjust even though it wasn't easy to hold possession, to hold your feet, and Queen's brought a lot of intensity to the game as well."

Ronan O'Neill was named `man of the match' after top-scoring with 1-6, and Harte hailed the performance of the Omagh clubman: "He was very efficient, and conditions were difficult for a player of his style, so if he was work well in those conditions then I suppose on faster ground he should do better still.

"He was making things happen, he was accurate with his frees, by and large. He can pick out passes and that's always good to have on the team".