WHEN KIERAN McGEENEY was asked about his thoughts on the upcoming All-Ireland semi-final between Tyrone and Dublin in his post-match press conference yesterday evening, he made a very interesting observation.
The Armagh boss, who watched his side exit the championship after a 3-17 to 0-8 loss to Tyrone, believes the referee selected for the last four clash will have a massive bearing on the outcome of the game.
“I’ll be interesting to see how it goes,” he said. “Depending on how the referee sees the tackling it can go for you, it can go against you. Those particular things can have a big difference in a semi-final.
“When they played Kerry during the league there was a lot of scoreable frees given that day. In the championship to date there hasn’t been too many. Small things like that can make a big difference with the big teams. That can have a big bearing on it.”
Joe McQuillan refereed the February meeting between the sides, which finished level after Dean Rock converted an injury-time free to preserve Dublin’s unbeaten streak.
Tyrone’s tackling against Armagh was exemplary for the most part and they conceded just three frees inside the scoring zone – which were converted by Rory Grugan (2) and Niall Grimley.
Tyrone drop 14 bodies behind the ball and often double up in tackles, but they’ve become masters at forcing the attacker overcarry the ball by simply crowding him out.
David Gough awarded Armagh only a handful of frees during the entire game, a testament to Tyrone’s diligence and discipline in the tackle.
McGeeney was armed with a number of statistics in his assessment of Armagh’s poor display against the Red Hand.
“In the first 15 minutes we had 82 or 83% percent turnovers in our attack. That meant four out of every five attacks the ball was coming straight back so you’re doubling your workload, while they’re halving their workload. That builds up. They ended up with an eight point deficit and we never really recovered from that.
“Any mistake, they pounced on it. I think they had a 65 per cent shooting accuracy compared to 30 per cent for us. There’s a whole lot of things that add up to the result. It wasn’t a good day at the office for the boys but I do believe they’re better than that.”
He also identified the lack of bodies Armagh committed to the attack as a major reason for their downfall.
“We played a certain way all year and then when you miss one or two players, that can have a bit of an effect on it. We didn’t react well at the start, we wanted to move the ball quickly but didn’t and got caught up.
“I didn’t feel that we committed enough men to attack, it was ones and twos instead of threes and fours and lads got caught on their own and were suffocated. Tyrone are very good at that, they’ve been working on that for a while. Armagh are just going to have to learn how to deal with that.
I don’t think today probably reflects how good the team is but it does reflect how they’re able to deal with that type of defence. But then every team that has gone before them found it difficult to deal with as well.
“You have to be able to move the ball quick, you have to be able to commit men to the attack, more than ones and twos, it needs to be threes and fours and they didn’t have that.
“That’s why some of our better forwards were easily suffocated, because they didn’t have those runners off the shoulder. They showed glimpses of it for 20 minutes in the second-half but when the chances were there they didn’t take them and if there’s nothing there to fight for, sometimes the team will just lose heart.”
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