Football

Skills will pay the bills for Tyrone says Mattie Donnelly

Mattie Donnelly has already captained Tyrone to one trophy this season, and at the expense of Ulster Championship opponents Derry <br />Picture by Philip Walsh
Mattie Donnelly has already captained Tyrone to one trophy this season, and at the expense of Ulster Championship opponents Derry
Picture by Philip Walsh
Mattie Donnelly has already captained Tyrone to one trophy this season, and at the expense of Ulster Championship opponents Derry
Picture by Philip Walsh

MUCH has been made of Tyrone’s fitness and physicality but, as Mattie Donnelly tells Cahair O’Kane, you won’t get anywhere without ability...

AS MATTIE DONNELLY sits in Killymoon Golf Club on a warm Friday afternoon, the neck muscles are almost bursting out of his shirt.

Standing at an even six-foot, his physique is the norm in the current Tyrone squad. The upper body is there to break the tackles, but the real emphasis is on the legs and building the power in them to compete with the best in the country.

Seven or eight years ago, Gaelic football looked to be going down a different path. Cork and Kildare were leading the way, harbouring huge, mountainous men all over the park. Cork’s middle-eight was tipped to dominate football after they won the 2010 All-Ireland title.

It was a short era. Donegal and Dublin took the running game to a new level and Tyrone have adapted to follow suit: “The game is very much about mobility now. It used to be strength and wearing teams down, but you’re not gonna hit someone that you can’t catch. You need to marry both. It’s probably edging more towards the mobility aspect of it now,” says Donnelly.

When Armagh went to Healy Park two summers ago, there was a feeling in the Orchard camp that Tyrone were there to be bullied. Fuelled by a siege mentality formed during their defeat by Cavan a few weeks earlier, the Orchard men had studied how Donegal had broken the Red Hands down over the three seasons previous.

Monaghan had just knocked Mickey Harte’s side out of Ulster with a similarly physically-imposing performance and, when Aidan Forker grappled with Donnelly at the throw-in, the tone was set. The two were booked and it proved costly for the in-form Donnelly, who picked up a second yellow before half-time.

Tyrone lost their inspirational centre-back, they lost their cool and the game: “The manner in which we lost that day probably didn’t sit too well,” Donnelly recalls.

“You had the likes of Stephen O’Neill and Conor Gormley playing their last game in the Tyrone jersey as well. It probably was at a breaking point in terms of the team being in transition. It definitely did show up areas that needed to be worked on. I think we’ve seen the fruits of that since.”

One school of thought suggests Derry may try to mix it physically in Celtic Park in a bid to unsettle Tyrone. But the experience of that afternoon against Armagh will stand to them, Donnelly believes.

“I’d like to think the team is a bit longer in the tooth now than we were in 2014, physically and mentally," he says. 

“The mental side of it will be massive on May 22. I think we’re well equipped in both aspects to deal with what Derry can throw at us on May 22. I don’t think, if we lose on May 22, it’ll have anything to do with the Armagh game two years ago.”

As much as his namesake Peter has been credited with literally reshaping the Tyrone players, they still had to have the footballing acumen to reshape their style of play as well.

“You can get too hung up on the physical aspect of it. As the saying goes, ‘skills to pay the bills’. Decision-making, the skill sets and performing the basics are still at the top of the agenda when it comes to winning football games," Donnelly adds. 

“As you go up against better conditioned teams who are performing the basics well, you’re gonna have to have a high level of physical preparation behind you. You can be as fit as you want but, if you’re not performing the basics well, you’re fighting a losing battle.”

He wouldn’t be considered tall for a traditional midfielder. That, though, is where he found his home last year, reprising the old Enda McGinley role. An Allstar nominee at wing-forward in 2013, he blossomed at centre-back in that difficult 2014 season and then won an Allstar from midfield last year - albeit at number 10 on the Allstar team.

Watch the Irish News Championship preview for Tyrone:

Did he always see himself as a midfielder? “Yeah,” he says, almost surprisingly: “Midfielders now, with the kickout plans and systems, it’s not 100 per cent aerially. I was always good at competing in the air and I’d fancy myself not to be outfielded by anyone.

“I have that versatility. If you asked me the same question about being a defender or a forward, I’d probably say the same. I’m just ready to play wherever and try and convince myself I can play there.”

When he lifted himself from his seat at the front of the stand in Owenbeg back in January, it was the first time he had laced boots in over a month. From training with the Ulster inter-provincial side ended until that afternoon, he took a well earned break following a hectic 2015.

At the heart of Tyrone’s run to the All-Ireland semi-final from midfield, he then helped guide Trillick to their surprise success in the Tyrone SFC. Throw in the Ulster club series, his brief inter-provincial involvement and the part he played in the International Rules series and it all adds up.

On Donnelly came in Owenbeg on January 10 with his side 2-4 to 0-1 down to Derry. He had only stepped on the pitch when he broke a kick-out to start a move that led to a Patrick Quinn goal - the first step in a recovery that would see Tyrone win 1-16 to 4-6.

They had already beaten their May 22 opponents in the Ó Fiaich Cup and would go on to mount another recovery in Armagh to edge a thrilling and, at times, bad tempered McKenna Cup final after extra-time.

When they met in Omagh in the league, it was a whitewash. Derry never showed at all and the home side cruised to a 2-15 to 0-12 victory. Asked if their four wins from four over their first Championship opponents affords them any kind of significant psychological advantage, Donnelly wasn’t getting too excited.

“It depends. Each of those games went up in significance. The next one, we need to be very wary. We rate Derry very highly and we’d be wary of the next one," he says. 

“Championship football is just bred into Derry footballers, same as Tyrone, which probably comes through the club. There’s just something special about Championship days. That’s why we’ll not be taking anything for granted.

“May 22 really is a one-off game. Those games are all part of the process. We weren’t focusing on getting one over on Derry because of the Championship, we were focusing on getting ready for May 22. That really is where the party’s at.”

But as for the high praise they received in the wake of winning the Division Two title, when people began to talk them up as potentially being Dublin’s most credible challengers, Donnelly wasn’t getting ahead of himself.

“There’s only one way to find out really and it’s not by winning Division Two titles. The challenge is getting there and finding out. It’s one you have to relish. When you put in as much training as you do, you want to get to the days that challenge you like that. We’ll not really find out until it happens.”

Nine times in 10 minutes, he mentions the date of the Derry game. May 22, over and over. Ingrained in the mind, this first Ulster Championship meeting of the two old rivals since Tyrone were comfortable victors in the 2009 semi-final at Casement Park.

No Ulster title in six years, no All-Ireland in eight, this barren spell is in the realms of being officially classed as a drought. They may have been knocked out of Ulster at the preliminary round stage last year, but only the width of the bar denied them late on against Donegal.

The recovery was as emphatic as it was swift. Six clean sheets in-a-row underpinned the run to the last-four of the All-Ireland series, where Kerry halted them:  “Really, we bought into applying ourselves the way we should at that level and putting pride back in the Tyrone jersey," Donnelly says. 

"That’s what brought us to an All-Ireland semi-final. We never set out saying we were going to get there. We just took it a game at a time and applying ourselves in the week between games and then trying to do the jersey justice in those games.

“We ended up in an All-Ireland semi-final. The attitude is just going to be much of the same this year.” 

STRENGTHS


While a lot of the theories about this Tyrone team remain to be proven, there are elements of their play that have come together so well over the past two years.

It didn’t look particularly pretty in the early days, but Mickey Harte has stuck with the revamped gameplan that sees Tyrone, at certain times, withdraw all 15 men into their own half of the field. The reason he’s been able to do that is because of their conditioning levels.

One of the big theories is that they are, alongside Dublin, the fittest team in the country. Tyrone have become incredibly hard to break down. They didn’t concede a goal in the Championship after Martin McElhinney’s rebound effort in Ballybofey last May, keeping six consecutive clean sheets.

But they also have the personnel to be an effective counter-attacking unit. They break with runners from all angles. The development of Tiernan McCann over the past couple of seasons to become a key cog in that style of play underlines the way in which they now play.

Sean Cavanagh’s decision to play another season was hugely important, though it’s arguable that his brother Colm has become an equally important cog in his much-lauded role in front of the full-back line.

Peter Harte and Mattie Donnelly are exceptional playmakers and, with options inside, Tyrone possess the attacking wares to back up their defensive solidity

WEAKNESSES


Mickey Harte famously said a few years back that no Division Two team could ever win an All-Ireland title in the same year.

His side spent this spring marooned in the second-tier, though their unbeaten run - which now stretches to 16 games in total - backs up his claim that they were never a Division Two side, but rather a side being forced to play there.

There is much chat of them being the nearest thing to Dublin at present but, outside of last year’s clashes with Donegal, Monaghan and Kerry - two of which they lost - this revamped Tyrone side has not met enough high quality opposition in Championship football to yet be properly judged.

Tyrone have also yet to fully get around the lack of a truly consistent, reliable source of scores from dead balls. Ronan O’Neill has taken on a chunk of that responsibility this year and has kicked well through the successful National League campaign, while Darren McCurry is still the first name on the list from the right-wing.

The destination of the jerseys numbered at 13 and 15 could be determined by that reliability from frees, with Connor McAliskey - and perhaps Lee Brennan - also fighting for the two corner-forward slots.