Ulster SFC quarter-final: Donegal 1-13 Tyrone 1-11
Mickey Harte asked questions of the match officials afterwards while Declan Bonner declined to respond to tricky queries – but his Donegal team had more of the answers required and were worthy winners.
A question mark hangs over Harte's own future, having come to the end of a three-year term following his re-appointment in 2017, although all he said on that subject was "I haven't considered anything about that just right now."
The Tyrone boss was more vocal about the treatment of Conor McKenna. The returnee from Aussie Rules only scored a free, although he almost scrambled in a second half goal, but Harte took issue with the suggestion that he had been 'well-marshalled':
"Marshalled is a strange word, to call it that. Marshalled sounds like a job well done. Watching what was done in the first half, I don't think that was marshalling.
"I think that was man-handling and I don't think he got the protection he deserved from the officials. Marshalled, maybe you could call it that – I would call it worse than that."
Asked if the lack of a crowd affected the officiating, Harte responded: "Do you mean not seeing things happening off the ball? They should be tuned in to see what's going on. The ball doesn't go near the line all that often, line balls aren't their chief job. There are lots of other things to look about and I don't feel that was looked at properly.
"Did we end up with Conor McKenna getting booked? That's a bit ridiculous if people look into the detail of that."
Donegal manager Declan Bonner declined to respond to Harte's comments, saying "I'm not answering silly questions", but he did praise McKenna's marker Neil McGee: "Neil has played against many's a top forward in country over the past 10, 12 years, and he continues to do that. He put on a big shift but had to come out at half-time…with a knock."
There were some suggestions that Donegal defender Paul Brennan could have seen red for his contact with the back of Michael McKernan's head but again Bonner refused to engage: "I'm not going to discuss any of those, I'll have to see them again. I'm not going to get involved in any of that."
Instead, he quite rightly praised his team for bouncing back from an early four-point deficit: "We didn't get out of the blocks. Whatever breeze was there, we had it. The goal was a big score for us and it got us right back into it. Tyrone were the better side in the opening quarter, but we were the better side from then on.
"It was about rolling the sleeves up. You can have all the best tactics and top-class players, but there comes a time in Championship matches when you have to roll up the sleeves and really dig deep, Our lads did that today."
Harte insisted his players did likewise but they fell short as Donegal held on to the two-point lead given to them by half-time by a brilliant goal from 'man of the match' Michael Langan:
"The end result is we didn't get anything for it and we're out of the Championship. All we asked our players is to give the best of themselves and I can honestly say they did that.
"I think we played well enough to get a better result than we got, but life dictates that we didn't get the result we want, so we have to live with that."
