Sorry Saffrons tanked by Tyrone Minors

TYRONE 8-17  ANTRIM 0-2

AS the scoreline suggests, this was a stroll for Tyrone at O’Neills Healy Park on Saturday afternoon as they tore Antrim to shreds in the final group game in the Ulster Minor Championship.

The winning margin in no way flatters the Red Hands as they went about their business in a professional manner with the game as good as over by the end of the opening quarter with the hosts first three scores all proving to be goals.

It was 3-4 to 0-0 at the break but no doubt the management will be happy with the way that their side continued to play good open football in the second half and racked up a number of quality scores on a day when allbut three of their total came from play.

Antrim just couldn’t cope with the pace and direct approach of their opponents with the most pleasing aspect from a Tyrone point of view being the teamwork of the winners, as they always tried to pick out the player in the best position despite the fact that the game was long over as a contest before the final whistle.

The visitors’ only good spell in the game came in the opening five minutes as they owned the ball but did nothing with it.

Tyrone bided their time and in the seventh minute they opened the scoring when they hit their opponents on the break for centre half forward Matthew Howe to fire low to the net.

Three minutes later, man-of-the match Darragh Donaghy repeated this fate after cutting in from the right wing to bag the first of his three majors.

Antrim hit a wide as well as dropping one short into the arms of Tyrone keeper Oisin Watson, and they were punished again when a blistering 40 metre run from wing half back Brian Gallagher ended with him offloading for midfielder James Corry to notch goal number three.

It took Tyrone 20 minutes to get their opening point of the afternoon via a long range Donaghy free before Howe capitalised on a mistake in the Antrim defence to split the posts as well.

Donaghy burst through to fist over the bar and with the last kick of the half, corner back Jamie Concannon got in on the act with a quality point from distance to leave Tyrone well in control of things.

There was to be no let-up from Tyrone in the second half as, after Donaghy had opened the scoring from a free, they strung together the move of the match to carve open the Saffrons defence for Sean Corry to unselfishly square the ball for Gallagher to fire to the net at the back post.

Tyrone were relentless as they won every Antrim kick out and all the breaking ball and Conor Devlin, Liam Corry (2), Nathan Farry (2) and team Captain Conor O’Neill all tagged on points within ten minutes of the resumption.

Antrim finally opened their account in the 45th minute through centre half forward James Blaney, but in the next attack Donaghy got goal number five for the winners.

By this stage Tyrone had brought on a number of substitutes and they all made an impact with Liam Corry finishing with 0-4 to his name, Kelvin Nelson landing a brace and Liam Lawn also on target.

In the 53rd minute Tyrone got another goal as Donaghy completed his hattrick after good work from Nelson before a Michael McKenna free gave Antrim their second and last point of the game.

Tyrone though weren’t finished yet, and going into the last five minutes they closed the game out in style with a further two goals.

First of all Lawn squared the ball for Howe to palm to the net for his second major before O’Neill got forward to dummy keeper Senan Nagle and finish to an empty net to complete the rout.

Assistant Tyrone manager, Gary Hetherington admitted afterwards that they were more pleased with the way that they played in the second period.

“We did what we had to do and that is all that you can ask of the lads,” said Gary.

“We would be slightly disappointed with the first half as we stood off them a wee bit and they enjoyed a spell of possession. We got a response out of them at halftime and they kicked on. We told them that they had to push up and go man to man on them and when they did that in the second half we got a number of turnovers which resulted in scores.

“We can only concentrate on ourselves and we would be very pleased with our second half display especially our running off the ball.

“We created the scores by giving and going and having a third man coming in support, something that we didn’t do in the first half.

“The first goal kind of took the wind at their sails and then Darragh (Donaghy) and James (Corry) both scored as well and they were three good goals.

“But we were disappointed that we hadn’t scored any points at that stage, we weren’t creating as much as we should have been.”

Tyrone are through to the knockout quarter finals and Gary knows that the competition really starts now.

“We know that we are going to have stiffer and sterner tests ahead but we just have to move on and in two weeks time we are out again,” he said.

“You can’t just turn things on and off you have to keep the standards high at all times and in the second half we would be more than pleased with the way that the lads went about their business.

“We were hoping for that sort of performance because we hadn’t hit those heights in our first two games.”