Allianz Football League Division One: Tyrone v Cavan (tonight, 7pm, Healy Park)
EVERYTHING tends to look a bit different after Moving Weekend, but little ever changes across two days.
Tyrone hadn’t fallen so deep into the abyss that they’d never find a way out. There was always going to come a response and it’s the performance they found on Saturday past against Monaghan against which they’ll now be judged.
Cavan had a score of scores to settle with Roscommon, who’d been the holders of an anomalous record against a side they’d been bouncing up and down the leagues with since 2014.
Both these sides were close to their best last weekend. But consistency is what that they seek, and for Cavan that’s a bigger issue than Tyrone.
That was really where they fell down in their top flight campaign two years ago. They’d draw with Monaghan and Kerry, win in Mayo, but then got hammered in Healy Park and at home to Donegal, and lost again to Roscommon.
Their level is what they do repeatedly, and that makes it hard to yet accept the top tier as somewhere that will be home for more than a few months.
What they seem to be doing under Mickey Graham is rediscovering themselves, rather than reinventing.
Their lack of a couple of natural talismanic forwards over recent seasons has played into the narrative of an ultra-defensive team, but it’s been a hugely unfair one.
When they won promotion from Division Two in 2016 under Terry Hyland, they finished with the highest score and the best points difference of any team in the top three tiers.
They’ve been very much a running team over the past few seasons, but Mattie McGleenan’s reign was undermined by a porous defensive setup. Conceding 4-16 in the league final and 2-20 in Ballybofey on their first summer outing led to him throwing the attacking side completely overboard in the middle of last summer.
That left them in no man’s land and yet on a sweltering day when they had to concede home turf and play in Brewster Park, they gave Tyrone their fill of it despite the uncertainty of their switch to plan B.
Mickey Graham’s come in and done his best to redress the balance. Their win last weekend did throw a veil over their opening three games in which they scored 0-11, 0-13 and 0-11.
That simply will not be enough to keep them afloat, but while they can’t be judged solely on the improvements they showed against Roscommon, it was promising.
Their attacking play cut Anthony Cunningham’s side apart at times, despite the fact that they’d all 15 lodged in their own half. Cavan hit 3-13 and landed 17 wides on top of that, as well as three short and one off the post. The level of return didn’t match their excellence in terms of creating chances.
Killian Clarke moved out to midfield for the day having had a good start to the year in the full-back line, where Padraig Faulkner’s been excelling. The Breffnimen have only conceded one goal in four games, and that should have been disallowed for a foul on goalkeeper Raymond Galligan.
It will all get a tighter test from Tyrone, whose improvement in performance levels against Monaghan appeared to be directly as a result of two key measures.
The first was the pace in their play. It was evident from Monaghan’s first attack that Tyrone were much better clued-in defensively, and that showed once they got to grips with the supply that had been finding Conor McManus. Their tackling was back to the standards they expect.
The other portion was the switch of Mattie Donnelly to full-forward. It’s not the first time Mickey Harte’s done that, and it’s largely been effective when he has. Tyrone have needed his ball-winning presence to offer them the rewards for the kicking game that they’ve honed nicely over the last couple of seasons, and has been at the heart of their flashes of decent attacking play this year.
Ronan McNamee is likely to return to full-back, with Padraig Hampsey moving back out around the middle. Cavan’s style will cause them problems, more than they faced from a below-par Monaghan, but the Red Hands should squeeze their way through.
