Donnelly feels that Cavan workrate saw them edge Minor semi

TYRONE’S attempt to reach the Tier 2 All Ireland Minor final came up short at St.Tiernach’s Park in Clones on Saturday afternoon when Cavan finished strongly to book a place in the decider against Kildare.

After losing out in the Ulster semi final this new competition was one that Tyrone embraced especially after it was named after Paul McGirr and manager Gerard Donnelly eluded to that afterwards.

“When we went out against Derry we sort of said to the lads what are we going to do here,” he said.

“The GAA then named this competition after Paul McGirr so we wanted to honour it and give it a go. On the day though Cavan probably just wanted the game more today.

” We trained once a week since the Derry defeat with the lads going back to their clubs and during that time we lost poor Paul McGinley to a cruciate ligament and that was very unfortunately for our Captain. We can’t complain about the result today, Cavan deserved it, but our lads died with their boots on.

It was great for the GAA to fix this as a double header in Clones and give these lads the chance to play here and they will remember getting the opportunity to play here and represent their County here in an All Ireland semi final.”

Things looked to be going according to plan for the Red Hands when an Eoin Long goal helped them establish a 1-4 to 0-2 advantage at the end of the opening quarter.

“I don’t know why but the second quarter has been a problem for us for a while,” admitted Gerard.

“Cavan got the jump after our goal but even going in level at halftime we were happy enough as the elements weren’t that big an impact, we were going against whatever wee breeze that there was in the second half.

” We had a really strong bench today and we used it to try and give us that jump that we needed at times but Cavan got a few scores in the final quarter to go four up and leave it difficult for us but our lads battled to the end and kept fighting and we were unlucky to hit the crossbar with a goal chance.”