Lessons must be learned-Dooher

HIGH hopes of progress in the Ulster Championship were dealt a devastating blow as Tyrone bowed out of the title race on Sunday following a bitterly disappointing second half display before 10,067 spectators at Healy Park.

Goals in the latter stages saw the Red Hands fall by two points against Monaghan.

It means that they are now out of the provincial title race, although they still have the All-Ireland round-robin to redeem themselves later in the summer.

For the moment, though, there was no doubting the pain of defeat as the players, management and supporters made their way from Omagh. Better days may be ahead, but the lessons to be learned from this 2-17 to 1-18 loss are clear.

Team manager, Brian Dooher, spoke afterwards about where it had all gone wrong for Tyrone. They led comfortably at half-time after playing with the wind in the first half, only to see their lead eventually dwindle on the resumption.

“Overall, we should probably have been further ahead at half-time and then in the second half we invited Monaghan onto us far too much and they picked off their scores fairly easily,” said the former All-Ireland winning captain.

“But then we had the opportunity at the end again to come back and close the game out, only to fade out again which is disappointing. But that’s the way it is and we’ll have to take the learning from this and move on.

“In the second half, they played the majority of the game and we were reacting to whatever happened. It just wasn’t good enough for us, we didn’t handle it well and they were getting back into the heart of our defence and it was too late by then.

“There were too many runners coming through untracked and they did what they wanted to do without too much pressure. Monaghan are a good team and they took the opportunity which we gave them and took some good scores.

“I don’t think this was complacency. We hit too many wides and conceded too many frees in the first half. The frees were significant. It was hard for a while to get a free but maybe that’s a bit sour because we still had chances.”

It’s a result which means that Tyrone will be poorly seeded in the draw for the last sixteen of the Sam Maguire Cup. In a change to the format for 2023, there will be four teams of four playing against each other for a place in the All-Ireland Quarter Finals.

Tyrone’s record through the previous back-door system is good and they will be hoping to bounce back strongly from this result.

However, for now, the Ulster Championship was what mattered and this loss is one which is hard to take against opponents that they defeated comfortably in the National League a few weeks ago.

“We regarded today as the real championship and it’s very disappointing to exit in the way that we did. But, we have a chance to rebase and reset ourselves,” he added.

“There’s three or four weeks now to really knuckle down and do some hard work.

“In the second half, they were dictating the pace of the game. We weren’t attacking and getting the pressure on early enough. There were then tackles going in when they shouldn’t have been made.

“That leaves us in a position where we were vulnerable and that’s what killed us at the finish up. It was a game of two halves to an extent. It’s something that we have to work on because in the second half we weren’t getting the right players in the right place.

“You can look at all these things now, but we’ll never know. I’m not sure if things would have made much difference.”