Tyrone 5-18 Cavan 2-17
No need to complicate matters here. Ignore the fact that Cavan ended the day with the sort of score that usually wouldn’t lose an Ulster Championship match if it went to extra-time, penalties and bingo. If it’s proof of anything, it’s only that everyone in the ground stopped caring long before the end.
Nope, this is eminently straight-forward. Tyrone had two weeks to prepare for a replay after a game in which they conceded three goals. When it mattered here, they conceded zero goals and instead rained them in by the vatful at the other end. Under Mickey Harte, they have won replays by an average of 10 points. They won this one by 10 points. Next question.
They took Cavan by the ankles here and shook every last penny of lunch money out of their pockets. The only reason the scoreboard looks in any way respectable is that Terry Hyland’s side managed to pilfer 2-7 in the closing quarter-hour when anyone with sense was beating the traffic.
By far the more pertinent time period to look at takes in the 15 minutes before half-time and the 10 minutes after it, during which Tyrone moved the scoreboard from 0-5 to 0-5 all the way up to 4-8 to 0-8. Three of the four goals were jailbreaks, gangs of Tyrone forwards bearing down on back-pedalling, outnumbered Cavan defenders. It was simplicity itself.
Cavan are good at many things, enough to make them the match of Tyrone when the mood is right and the wind is fair. They can defend well in numbers and winkle turnovers enough of the time to keep them within touching distance. What they lack, however, is Tyrone’s spiderish facility for luring the fly into the parlour, from there to rain destruction upon the general fly population.
Time upon time, Cavan attacks choked their last breath around the Tyrone 45. The speed and ferocity with which Tyrone players scudded forward on the break just isn’t something that Terry Hyland’s side can either live with or replicate. Peter Harte plundered two goals and blazed another over the bar. Connor McAlliskey and Rory Brennan walked the other two in. If they’d needed them, Tyrone could have scored eight or nine.
“We probably didn’t expect to run out with as much to spare,” said Harte afterwards. “But we did believe that we could do better than we had done the first day. We knew that if we didn’t concede three goals then we’d probably be in a strong enough position. The way it turned out, we didn’t concede the goals when it mattered.
“We did concede late in the game, which we’d be concerned about. But we weren’t conceding goals and we were getting scores ourselves. And I guess when you do get scores yourself, that’s a great fillip. There’s days like that when the game runs for you. You get the breaks and you finish the breaks off. You could be playing like that another day and not get the scores. We could be playing a more compact defence. I think Cavan played with abandon at a certain stage there. I suppose they had to chase the game at half-time - you can’t defend a seven-point deficit.”
It was actually a reasonably even encounter up until the 20-minute mark but Peter Harte’s two goals inside 90 seconds cracked the game open. His first was a pearler of a strike with his left boot after he stole in behind the Cavan cover. His second was a tap-in after Tiernan McCann led a break-out and looked set to score himself until Ray Galligan in the Cavan goal brought him down. David Coldrick would have given a penalty had Harte not been on hand to tidy up.
It meant that pretty much out of nowhere, Tyrone were seven points up. A couple of frees from Harte and Niall Morgan soon after pushed it out to nine. Although Cavan nicked a couple back before the break through Gearoid McKiernan frees, it was impossible to imagine there was a result there for them to chase.
And if they did harbour notions, it only took the 10 minutes after the restart to douse them. Connor McAlliskey’s goal on 42 minutes to ice the contest was a classic of the counter-attacking genre. Cavan tried to punch holes in the Tyrone defence but over-committed and got turned over, leading to a three-on-one break for the 60 metres it took McAlliskey to get close enough to finish.
After that, it was a training game. Tyrone scored as they liked, Cavan did pretty much the same. Nobody tackled too hard, nobody got too hurt. The day only saw one yellow card, as early as the sixth minute.
Tyrone have lost to Donegal in four of the last six seasons. We can take it the final will be a more robust day’s work for all concerned.
Cavan: Ray Galligan (0-1, 45); Killian Brady, Rory Dunne, James McEnroe; Feargal Flanagan (0-1), Conor Moynagh (0-2), Niall Murray; Mossy Corr, Killian Clarke (0-1); Dara McVeety, Gearoid McKiernan (0-7, 0-4 frees), Martin Reilly (0-1); David Givney (0-1), Cian Mackey (1-3), Eugene Keating. Subs: Jack Brady (1-0) for Givney, 27 mins; Jason McLoughlin for McEnroe, 34 mins; Brian Sankey for K Brady, 49 mins; Pádraig Faulkner for Murray, 54 mins; Michael Argue for Reilly, 59 mins; Gerard Smith for McVeety, 63 mins
Tyrone: Niall Morgan (0-1, free); Justin McMahon (0-1), Ronan McNamee, Cathal McCarron; Tiernan McCann, Niall Sludden (0-1), Aidan McCrory; Colm Cavanagh, Mattie Donnelly (0-3); Cathal McShane (0-2), Ronan McNabb, Peter Harte (2-4, 0-1 free); Connor McAliskey (1-2, 0-1 free), Sean Cavanagh (0-2), Ronan O'Neill. Subs: Rory Brennan (1-0) for McNabb, 46 mins; Darren McCurry for C Cavanagh, 51 mins; Jonathan Monroe (0-1) for McShane, 52 mins; Mark Bradley (1-1) for O'Neill, 55 mins; Pádraig Hampsey for McNamee, 58 mins; Barry Tierney for Sludden, 65 mins.
Referee: David Coldrick (Meath)
