Football

Guts and good bloodlines return a smirk to Tyrone football

Eoin Montgomery, right, and Steve Donaghy of Tyrone embrace after their side's victory in the EirGrid GAA Football All-Ireland U20 Championship Semi-Final match between Kerry and Tyrone at MW Hire O'Moore Park in Portlaoise, Laois. Photo by Harry Murphy/Sportsfile
Eoin Montgomery, right, and Steve Donaghy of Tyrone embrace after their side's victory in the EirGrid GAA Football All-Ireland U20 Championship Semi-Final match between Kerry and Tyrone at MW Hire O'Moore Park in Portlaoise, Laois. Photo by Harry Eoin Montgomery, right, and Steve Donaghy of Tyrone embrace after their side's victory in the EirGrid GAA Football All-Ireland U20 Championship Semi-Final match between Kerry and Tyrone at MW Hire O'Moore Park in Portlaoise, Laois. Photo by Harry Murphy/Sportsfile

EirGrid All-Ireland U20 Football Championship semi-final: Kerry 1-12 Tyrone 1-14

AFTER a week-long wake, this was the bit where Tyrone football shook off the sadness and found the joy in remembering what makes it so unique.

For fear of ignoring the obvious, Ruairi Canavan is utterly unique. Sure, he’s like the father and he’s like the brother, and the comparisons are inevitable. You want to let him be his own man and find his own way.

The bloodline will forever be a reference point but DNA doesn’t kick balls over the bar. He’s like a young lad that has already worked ridiculously and relentlessly hard at his finishing.

His eight points that punched holes in Kerry’s resolve yesterday will generate a year’s worth of clickbait all on their own, and rightly so. His will be the headlines, and they’re easy to give to him.

But God this was gutsy stuff from Tyrone as a team, and as individuals.

Funnily enough, at the head of the queue was Sean O’Donnell, who wore 13, kicked a brilliant score but mostly caught the eye with four brilliant turnovers and a magnificent score-saving block that started the Tyrone attack which led to their goal.

They call O'Donnell 'The Gooch' in Trillick. His bloodline? A cousin of Ruairi Canavan, a nephew of Peter, and whose own father Declan was a handy baller in his own right.

Ruairi Canavan has three full cousins on the panel, with the McGarrity brothers related on his mother's side, while Michael McGleenan and James Donaghy are also cousins.

O'Donnell's workrate typified the Tyrone performance, which typified the Tyrone attitude to the slap up the mouth their seniors took last week. If Kerry were going to beat them, it would blood, tears and coming off O’Moore Park drenched in litres of sweat.

You kept waiting for the searing heat to make the pace of the game drop, but it never did. End-to-end, start to finish, it could as easily have been won by Kerry, but it wasn’t.

That it wasn’t was a lot down to Tyrone’s defensive effort. O’Donnell’s work working back caught the eye but up against a serious forward line, there were big plays by the lot of them. Eoin Corry was the pick of the defence, throwing himself about all afternoon.

Dylan Geaney – a cousin of Paul, another with a strong bloodline – and Kevin Goulding gathered up 1-8 between them but the amount of ball they had, that was no shame on Brian Conway and Michael Rafferty either.

At the other end, Canavan got his eight but the performance of Conor Cush was outstanding too. His ball-winning ability inside and willingness to take his man on earned him two points.

And just when you wondered if Tyrone had made a mistake taking him off ten minutes from time, his replacement Gavin Potter produced the game-breaking moment.

Canavan’s shot had come down off a post and with Kerry defenders converging on the hopping break, Potter palmed it down to Ciaran Bogue rather than catching. The young Clogher forward took his tally to 1-2 with a cool low finish under severe pressure from goalkeeper Devon Burns.

Four minutes from time, it pushed Tyrone 1-13 to 0-13 ahead. It was the first daylight seen either way since Tyrone started to close the door over on the four-point advantage Kerry had built on Geaney’s early second-half goal.

His finish was superb too, low into a gap barely the size of a football at the near post. He followed it with a point and Kerry led by 1-7 to 0-6. Tyrone hit the next two scores and from there to the death, you weren’t calling a winner with any degree of certainty.

“As Dermy (Carlin) keeps preaching on the training field, the body might be tired, but keep the mind calm, keep yourself calm,” said Tyrone boss Paul Devlin.

“We knew we'd get our chances. So really when Kerry got the goal...what was it, the first few minutes of the second-half...fair play to Kerry, they made some super moves and there were things they'd worked on and tried to do, and in a game like this it's going to come off sometimes and they got the goal, fair play to Kerry but it was about how we responded.”

Michael McGleenan had pulled Tyrone into the game with a couple of big fetches when they were needed early on, with a black card inside six minutes for full-back Brian Conway threatening to disrobe the Red Hands’ setup.

But they lost that period just 0-3 to 0-2 and they only grew as it went on. The game shuttled breathlessly from one end to the other, and really a 0-6 to 0-5 scoreline at the break was a reflection of its defensive quality but harsh on both attacks too.

Tyrone did start to struggle with the energy of the outstanding Ruairí Murphy, whose performance at midfield threatened to carry Kerry across the line in the second period.

Joey Nagle was handed the unenviable task of trying to curtail Canavan - “I thought Joey was outstanding to be honest,” said his boss Declan O’Sullivan after - while Alan Dineen made a few big turnovers but still leaked 1-2 to Bogue. For all the attacking quality, Tyrone were better in defence and that stood to them.

“There's some mighty characters in that defence, so there is,” said Devlin.

“Lads will go in (to the dressing-room) now and go home tonight and they'll be bruised and hurt so they will. The effort they put in today was immense, they worked for each other and look, it's like everything else in life, if you don't work for each other, what are you going to get, in anything that you do?

“So that's the whole philosophy in Tyrone, working together.”

Somewhere shy of a week separates them from a decider against Kildare now. Date unknown, venue unknown.

Tyrone would like it in Croke Park, but Leinster Council’s very questionable decision to put its two senior semi-finals there on Sunday could see to those ambitions.

Sorrows swallowed, the sun was always going to rise again. If not a full-blown smile, Tyrone football could at least smirk again after yesterday.

Kerry know better than anyone that they’re not handy kept down.

MATCH STATS


Kerry: D Burns (0-1 free); D O’Callaghan, A Dineen; A Heinrich; J Nagle, E O’Connor, T Cronin; R Murphy (0-2), S O’Brien; C Burke (0-1), T O’Donnell, E Looney; D Geaney (1-4, 0-2 frees), K Goulding (0-4, 0-1 mark), K Evans


Subs: G Hassett for Evans (37), A Curran for Cronin (41), J Kissane for O’Donnell (47), T Doyle for Looney (51), J O’Connor for Curran (57)


Black card: A Dineen (41-51)


Yellow cards: R Murphy (14), E Looney (30)

Tyrone: S McMenamin; M Rafferty, B Conway, E Corry; S Donaghy; J Donaghy, N Devlin, D Muldoon; R McHugh, M McGleenan (0-1); C Daly, S O’Donnell (0-1), R Canavan (0-8, 0-3 frees, 0-1 mark); C Cush (0-2), C Bogue (1-2)


Subs: G Potter for Cush (50), L Donnelly for O’Donnell (63), E Montgomery for Bogue (63)


Blood sub: G Potter for S O’Donnell (33-35)


Black card: B Conway (6-16)


Yellow card: R McHugh (49)

Referee: A Nolan (Wicklow)