Tyrone Masters ease past Armagh

TYRONE Masters’ produced a supreme all-round team performed to claimed a comfortable victory over Armagh on an idyllic evening in Eglish last Saturday night.

It was Tyrone’s second group stage match and they chalked up another lop-sided victory in their first home match of the campaign.

It wasn’t the only notable thing about the evening as the game was preceded by the opening of the new pavilion at Páirc Chormaic, a labour of love from the Eglish community and a lasting legacy to the late, great Cormac McAnallen.

His brother Dónal was captain for the evening and at no stage did it look like it was going to be anything other than a resounding Tyrone victory, albeit Armagh battled to the final whistle and grabbed a couple of consolation points.

The scores flowed freely from the word go, Trillick’s Niall Gormley scoring two points from play in the opening ten minutes. Stephen O’Neill, who was absolutely exceptional in a playmaker role, Michael Anderson, Gary Coney and Martin Grimes also got their names on the scoresheet in the opening quarter as Tyrone surged into an early lead.

Sean Cavanagh, in his first year of Masters football, entered the fray late in the first-half and they led by an insurmountable scoreline of 0-15 to 0-1 at the half-time whistle.

Tyrone’s dominance was evident in every sector with their half-back line spearheaded by Conor Gormley firmly on top of their opponents, and they continued where they left off after the break with a string of neat points from Niall Gormley and Michael Anderson.

The Red Hands got the only goal of the game when Cathal Nicholas applied a composed finish in front of the goal late in proceedings, and while Armagh to their credit tagged on a couple of late points, there was no doubting Tyrone’s overall dominance on the evening.