Under-20 coach lauds Tyrone’s perserverance

TYRONE U20 coach Diarmaid McNulty had total faith in his side’s powers of perseverance in last Wednesday evening’s thrilling Ulster Championship semi-final victory over pre-match favourites on their home turf at Owenbeg.

There was a worrying spell deep in the first half where Derry rattled off five points on the trot, but Tyrone finished the half strongly to leave only a point between the teams at the interval, after which they assumed control of the contest en route to booking their spot in this week’s Ulster Championship final against Donegal.

Diarmaid McNulty, who is in his second year in the U20 set-up, says he wasn’t unduly worried about their sticky patch in the second-half and knew that they would come good over the course of the 60 minutes.

“It was 0-5 apiece after 20 minutes, and then they got a wee purple patch to go 0-9 to 0-5 up.

“They finished the half really strongly and Ruairi McCullagh’s two-pointer to get it to 0-9 to 0-8 was important.

“At half-time it was a very calm changing room. There were a couple of wee tactical tweaks but we know that we have trained damn hard and that the game is over 60 mintes.

“There’s a lot of big scores in games now and a lot of people think you have to be high scoring in the first half, but it’s a 60-minute game and we play for every single minute of it.

“The big one for us is that we stated the second half strongly and kept going and after any chance we had, we went again which was damn important.”

There were times in the first half when Derry looked to be in the ascendancy in the important battle for midfield supremacy, but that certainly wasn’t the case after the break as Tyrone began to lord matters in the middle, an important facet in their ultimate victory. Diarmaid says that the new rules make things more of a lottery in that regard.

“The game is changing, you can’t go for too many short kickouts anymore, there’s a lot more ball going long. There’s times at training it works perfectly and you think you’ve got it sussed, and then there’s actual games where the ball seems to just bounce the wrong way.

“The more effort you put into getting into the right positions though, the more chance you have of getting the ball.”

Next up, a talented Donegal side that made minceat of Cavan in their own Ulster Championship semi-final clash.

They’ve already played and overcome Tyrone in this year’s campaign, in a group stage clash against Ballybofey, but it seems like Tyrone are hitting peak form at the right time.

“We’re not shocked they’re there, they’re a quality outfit. It’ll be a serious battle, it’ll be one we’re looking forward to. They have quality players and we have quality players and hopefully we’ll put on a good spectacle.”