O’Grady won’t dwell on Wicklow disappointment

TYRONE camogie manager Paul O’Grady wasn’t disguising his disappointment after their narrow defeat to Wicklow at the weekend, but he knows that there’s plenty of positives to take ahead of their next All-Ireland group stage match against Armagh on Saturday afternoon in Omagh.

The Red Hand camogs played very well on the whole but couldn’t quite get the measure of their opponents, particularly in the closing stages, falling to a 1-12 to 1-9 defeat in Derrytresk.

It was a game they’d earmarked as a barometer of their overall progress, so their manager was disappointed that they couldn’t seal the deal. But they still have three round-robin games left in their All-Ireland campaign so they have plenty of time to make their mark in the competition.

“The Wicklow game was our biggest game of the year, they’re a massive team, they never say die, and we try to live by that as well, but they just managed to pull through unfortunately,” said O’Grady.

“There was nothing in it – games like these come down to the little things, sometimes the luck is with you and unfortunately on this occasion it wasn’t.

“Wicklow got off to a really goood start, they opened up a 1-2 to 0-1 lead and maybe those scores told in the end. We probably didn’t score enough to warrant the win, 1-9 isn’t enough but we’ll try to learn from that.”

Saturday’s opponents Armagh have been pinned as favourites to win the All-Ireland Premier Junior Championship outright. They’re a strong team who recently took Derry to extra-time of the Ulster Senior Championship semi-final, but O’Grady believes that if Tyrone play to their potential they won’t be too far away.

“Armagh’s coming up to Healy Park and we won’t give them anything easy. They’re definitely the team to beat, but hopefully we can do the job and get ourselves back on track.

“We’ll take the Wicklow loss, bottle it and move on. There were plenty of positives, it was a great game to watch I’m sure as a fan – not so much when you’re in the dug out – but we played well, we didn’t shy away from the battle and we’ll take the positives from it and see what we can do against Armagh.”