Dooher offers no excuses after mauling from the Dubs

TYRONE joint-manager Brian Dooher proffered no excuses when picking the bones of a desperately disappointing day at GAA Headquarters yesterday.

The Red Hands fell to a 21-point defeat at the hands of the Dubs on day that could diplomatically be chalked down as one to forget.

But whatever way you look at it, it has still taken some of the shine of what had otherwise been a productive league campaign and Brian Dooher says some serious soul-searching will need to be done if they’re to rectify matters in their looming championship campaign.

“There’s not much to take out of that, to be perfectly honest. We have to call it what is is, it’s a bit of an embarrassment.

“It just wasn’t good enough, and we know that. There’s no point making excuses, it’s just not where we need to be.

He added: “I’m not going to say there’s excuses for it, because there isn’t. it wasn’t good enough – we were disappointing in our application, and our general intensity and workrate wasn’t near where it should be.

“We need to take a good look at our selves, both players and managers going forward for the next three or four weeks to get ready for Monaghan or Cavan in the championship.”

Positives were few and far between on a day where Tyrone conceded five goals against a Dublin side who have picked up a serious head of steam heading into their Division One final clash against Derry next weekend.

Dooher commented: “Dublin were very good, don’t get me w rong. Dublin are good. They are not All-Ireland champions for nothing and they are getting better. We weren’t good.

“Our work rate, our application, just general things weren’t good enough across the field and if you add them two together you don’t get a good mixture, you don’t get a good result.”

Dooher also said that the team must take collective responsibility after a day to forget in every facet.

The gulf between themselves and Dublin can’t be overstated, at least on this showing, but Dooher says that they made it all too easy for the Dubs to strut their stuff at Croke Park.

“There’s a bit of personal responsibility for everybody, first and foremost, and you have to look at yourself in the mirror and see what you did or didn’t do well.

“We start from there, and if we do that all individually, first and then collectively as a group, that’s how we have to start addressing things, because let’s be honest, Dublin go doing what they wanted to do today, and to be fair, they worked really hard.

“They just outworked us and outplayed us once they had the ball.”

Many of Tyrone’s more senior players were out of commission due to injury and rest and their defensive rearguard was particularly lacking in the experience front, as Dooher acknowedged:

“There is a lot of young boys there, and I suppose it’s a chastening experience for them, but I suppose at the same time, at this level of football, there’s very little forgiveness.

“If you don’t turn up every day, you’re going to be found out, and we certainly were today, but a very good footballing team.”

Elaborating on where it all went wrong, Dooher was particularly unsettled at the ease with which Dublin were allowed to transition up the pitch.

“We’ll sit down and look at it on the video and see where it is, where we’ll see a bit more in slower time, see what happened and try to address some of those issues.

“But the first half we had chances, didn’t take them, got turned over and were punished well for it every time. We didn’t deal with kickouts well at all. Dublin got up the field with no pressure on too many times.

He continued: “They run hard and they work hard, but they just got up the field with ease and they weren’t turned back when they were going up the field too many times.

“It’s very hard for a defence to cope with that, if that’s coming at you repeatedly.

“When everybody gets the ball on their first run where they want it, it’s difficult to cope with, especially against a good team.”