A BITTER town in an angry county.
I chortled at that description of my hometown Dungannon in a history book I'm reading. It referred to the late 19th century, but those words still held true when I was growing up there 100 years later. It's funny because it's true.
I took a perverse pride in those words. I also want to get a T-shirt printed bearing the infamous phrase of former British PM, Herbert Assquith: 'That most damnable creation of the perverted ingenuity of man — the County of Tyrone."
Truth be told there is a, shall we say 'competitive' streak in most Tyrone people.
That will to win, that desire to succeed, is often a positive.
Yet sometimes it spills over, goes too far. But not as far as many bigoted loudmouths make out.
That was the case at Croke Park on Sunday, in the closing stages of Stewartstown Harps against Fossa of Kerry in the All-Ireland Junior Football Championship Final.
By the end, the Harps had only 11 players on the field, and Fossa had just 13, with both Clifford brothers sent off, scoring sensation David and captain Paudie.
Appropriately, I missed two of the six red cards because I was debating on Twitter about an earlier incident during that game.
Yet, after watching the video, I'd argue that only one player should definitely have been red-carded – Stewartstown sub Anton Coyle.
The one really bad action in the match was Coyle throwing the point of his elbow into the face of Paudie Clifford.
That split the Fossa captain open, forcing him off in a blood substitution – but it could easily have resulted in much worse: a broken nose, broken teeth, perhaps even a broken jaw.
Coyle deserves severe punishment. The ball had gone, there was no attempt at a tackle, it was sheer nastiness.
It's not clear whether Paudie merited dismissal, although he certainly wasn't the complete innocent he portrayed himself as during his 'Golden Cleric' acceptance speech afterwards.
To use the rugby terminology, Paudie's hand did appear to make 'contact with the eye area' of Stewartstown wing-back Gerard O'Neill as the Fossa man ran past.
Stewartstown's Kyran Robinson reacted to that by chasing Paudie and throwing him to the ground. Was that really worthy of a red card?
No one, quite rightly, is condemning David Clifford for getting sent off, even though his heavy challenge, which sparked that late hoo-ha, merited a second yellow card (his first, apparently, for kicking a ball away).
Equally, his opposite number, Gareth Devlin, didn't do a pile wrong, with his second yellow a few minutes earlier, appearing harsh.
David Clifford, as class an act off the pitch as he is on it, shrugged off the scenes late in the game, pointing out in his live interview to accept the 'Man of the Match' trophy, that "there was a lot at stake."
The first red card of the game, the one which provoked my Twitter argument, was excessive, in my view.
Stewartstown full-back Darren Devlin shouldn't have been sent off, in my opinion. Sure, he was daft to raise his hand to the face of Fossa's Emmett O'Shea, but if that's 'striking' then my real name is Kennij van Driver.
If we're demanding officials apply the letter of the law, then O'Shea should have been booked for his simulation that he had been badly hurt.
So, six red cards, four of them for Stewartstown, but only one was absolutely required.
A sensible analysis such as that doesn't fit into the 'Tyrone savages' narrative, though, does it?
Having said all that, Tyrone teams do need to improve their discipline.
Stewartstown were only three points behind heading into four minutes of added time, and both teams had 14 men as Fossa forward Cian O'Shea was just about to return to the pitch, having been black-carded 10 minutes earlier for a hand-trip on his opposite number Tiernan Rush.
Coyle had to go, and the argy-bargy after that led to his team going down to 12 men, as Gareth Devlin's second yellow resulted from those incidents.
The Harps kept going, remarkably, but three men down they were never going to be able to conjure up an equalising goal.
Apart from the cost to Stewartstown themselves, the reputational damage to Tyrone football continues too.
Never before in the field of sporting conflict have so many big name sportswriters gathered to watch a junior football match. All there to watch the David Clifford Show – but that meant a huge amount of attention was also on Stewartstown and all those sendings-off.
I don't include myself among those big names, but I did travel down early to see that Junior decider, partly because of Stewartstown's involvement, partly because of David Clifford's presence.
Work-wise, I was there to cover the second part of the double-header, the Intermediate Football Final, also between teams from Tyrone and Kerry, Galbally and Rathmore respectively.
The theory that Tyrone teams are universally, continually dirty didn't gain any evidence from that second match.
It was just as tight and tense as the one before, but the only card other than a yellow was a black card, shown to Galbally midfielder Enda McGarrity for blocking off the run of a Rathmore player.
Yet social media was awash with abuse of Tyrone GAA.
One leading pundit talked about "thuggery" and "victimhood" and alluded to the many incidents involving Tyrone teams.
Did it cross his mind that Tyrone teams, at club and inter-county level, have been involved in lots of finals and semi-finals, hugely intense matches?
I could go back and list the spitting, eye-gouging, punching, and wrestling/time-wasting incidents, all on the record, involving the great Dublin teams of the previous decade. The hero worship of a Dublin player who should have been jailed for off-pitch thuggery.
Strangely, there's no narrative about 'dirty Dublin'.
Similarly, I saw little or no scrutiny of what Paudie Clifford may have done. Nor about Emmett O'Shea's play-acting to get an opponent sent off on the biggest day of his sporting career.
I've seen a key Tyrone player deliberately have his jaw broken in a major Ulster match. Others have had knees 'dropped' onto them. A Tyrone player stamped on in an All-Ireland Final – yet the post-match moaning was about niggle from the Red Hand players.
An eye-gouging allegation last year – not the one involving Armagh – was barely looked at.
Tyrone teams do need to help themselves, their behaviour has to improve, but over-reaction is unfair.
This is not a claim to "victimhood". Tyrone teams have done plenty wrong.
Hold the Red Hands to account, sure – but do the same for everyone.
Do you wonder that sometimes Tyrone folk are bitter and angry?
