“We’ll have to ask ourselves serious questions on the physicality end of it. We were pushed back as we tried to break tackles. Once we broke the first line, we were pushed straight back through it again. It’s something only Tyrone men can change.”
PJ Quinn, after Tyrone lost to Armagh in 2014
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THAT was a sobering day for Tyrone football.
Even though they’d reached an All-Ireland semi-final in 2012, there was a sense that they were a generation hanging off the edge of a cliff even by then.
The last strands of the great All-Ireland winning teams were all-but gone.
The autumn after Armagh bullied them off their own patch, Peter Donnelly was brought home from Cavan and hired as the county’s strength and conditioning coach. He has since morphed into also being the all-round football coach for the senior squad.
But the first portion of his work was changing the way Tyrone were built. Focusing on explosive power in the legs and arms, he also tightened up their running techniques to increase their speed.
It seems like an obvious formula, but few men would be able to apply the science to Gaelic football in the way that Donnelly did.
As a result, Tyrone’s players are now in exceptional physical shape. When that tends to really manifest itself is when they face weaker opposition.
They haven’t lost a qualifier since. Ten wins from ten, with two Ulster titles in between. That has been a direct result of the modernisation of their play and the improvement in their conditioning.
When they drop bodies back and protect the middle of their goal, they swallow weaker teams up. The sheer power and intensity of their tackling is just too much.
And when they can grab a turnover in open play, they can be absolutely lethal going the other way.
It is the ultimate in flat-track bullying. No team from outside the top few is able to do anything to stop them. Look at some of the scores they’ve put up in the last few years.
2-22 in Kildare on Saturday.
3-20 in Cork last summer.
4-24 against Roscommon in Croke Park.
2-17 in Ballybofey.
3-17 against Armagh in the quarter-final in 2017.
5-18 against Cavan in the Ulster semi-final replay of 2016.
Tyrone are not a defensive team. They have been an excellent counter-attacking team in the last five years.
The Red Hands are all about eating up the space, moving the ball from back to front as quickly as possible and trying to eat teams alive.
Yet if you break down their championship games since 2015, there is a massive disparity between their games against Division One opposition and ties against the rest.
Their average score against Division Four opposition is 2-19. Against Division Three teams, it’s 1-18. Division Two, 2-17.
But against top tier teams, it drops as low as 1-13.
They’ve lost 7 of the 12 games they’ve played against top tier sides.
Scoring 1-13 will not beat Dublin. In their three big games against them, they’ve managed to cobble together 0-11, 0-14 and 1-14. Inching closer but still not nearly enough.
The start of this year seemed to recognise the fact that in order to try and bridge the gap to what they need to score, they had to keep more men up the pitch and kick the ball more.
But the back door was swinging open and Donegal capitalised. They laid a trap and Tyrone stepped straight in.
They had to learn the lessons of such a chastening day and get better, just as they did in 2014. But what Mickey Harte appears to have done in the two games since is go back on all the work they'd done earlier in the year.
Cathal McShane has played as a lone striker against Longford and Kildare. Although he managed to conjure up five points on Saturday, he seldom in possession in the areas in front of goal where they’d previously been getting him on the ball.
Mattie Donnelly was back playing at centre-back. They were back putting 14 men behind the ball and running it the length of the field.
That’s grand against Longford and Kildare. It’ll be good enough for Cavan too.
To revert to it after 20 minutes against Donegal would have been the answer that day.
As a Plan B, it’s an exceptionally good one to have. One they’ll need. You think of going to the Hyde in two weeks, where it could be very useful.
The problem with going back to the old running game as Plan A through this qualifier journey is that Tyrone are far better versed in that style than they are in the new one that they were trying to adopt.
Abandoning the kicking game at this stage means they simply could not be smooth enough at it to bring it back out of the box later in the year.
It’s the kicking game that they need the practice at, and they need that practice in big games.
Tyrone are the second best team in Ireland. Mickey Harte’s goal has to be becoming the best team.
And the counter-attacking, running game just will not do that on its own. There’s a whole vault full of evidence of how Dublin will shut that down and beat it.
Tyrone simply won’t get to 20 points against them playing that way.
Playing on the front foot had to become Plan A during the qualifiers because it’s the plan that they’ll need to beat Dublin.
If Dublin have an Achilles heel, it’s that they will give the opposition chances to attack them. They’ll rely on being good enough to defend against it with fewer bodies than others.
Tyrone, in Cathal McShane, Mattie Donnelly and with Peter Harte playing off them, have the potential to really trouble them if those three are given a licence to stay up the pitch.
But despite the results, the last fortnight has seemed like a sign of weakness.
Against the better sides, Tyrone simply do not score enough to win an All-Ireland. And yet, even despite the losses they’ve suffered in attack this year, Harte has a better attacking division at his disposal now than at any time in the last five years.
Going back to the old style might blow the minnows out of the water, but it’s a mistake in terms of their All-Ireland hopes.
The Donegal game was a disaster, but you either win or you learn. Tyrone didn’t learn. They panicked and reverted to type.
That’ll deep fry the plankton, but it won’t land the prize fish.
