IT IS HARD to imagine a time when a Tyrone team hit the championship not so much as a dark horse, but more like a ghost one.
An animal that borrows its capacity to menace more from battles past than from the current form book.
Armagh coach Conleth Gilligan echoed that this week when, light on specifics, he was heavy on caution.
‘It makes it very dangerous, it’s still Tyrone,’ he warned.
Perhaps, but just not like we know them.
Gilligan’s caution is both understandable and judicious. After all, it is less than 12 months ago when only Rory Grugan’s buzzer beater was all that separated the teams in a gripping Ulster semi-final.
Rory Grugan in action for Armagh against Tyrone. John McVitty / INPHO
John McVitty / INPHO / INPHO
And, in the bigger picture, Tyrone went deeper in the subsequent All-Ireland race than the defending champions, while history – much of it penned in the Mickey Harte era via the backdoor – informs the Red Hands are never more dangerous than when written off.
We hear you, but that is back to history, which is a lot more comforting for them than the present.
League Campaign
Tyrone have just come off a league campaign so poor it’s a struggle to find something that compares.
Deemed shoo-ins for promotion out of Division 2, they came much closer to relegation, managing just two wins.
You have to go back to 1992/93 for the county to have endured a more miserable league when, in an attempt to put some structure on the competition, four groups of eight were pulled out of a hat and the Red Hands performed so poorly in theirs they ended up as a Division 3 team for the 93/94 league.
Back then, Tyrone did not rank as one of the game’s genuine heavyweights while status in a league that straddled the fag end of one calendar year and the pre-season of another was neither something to be cherished nor ashamed of.
In other words, this feels like a brand new shiny low.
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Michael McKernan dejected after Tyrone's defeat to Meath. Laszlo Geczo / INPHO
Laszlo Geczo / INPHO / INPHO
If that feels like an over reaction to a couple of underwhelming months, it has to be seen in the context of where they were 20 months ago, when Malachy O’Rourke succeeded Brian Dooher and Feargal Logan.
In snapping up Ballygawley-based O’Rourke, they had secured the services of arguably the most sought after brains in the game while timing also seemed to be his friend, taking over as the county’s production line gifted him one All-Ireland U20 winning squad, which would beget another 12 months later.
So, what has gone wrong? Perhaps not as much as people think. The giddiness O’Rourke’s appointment invited ignored the reality of where he found Tyrone in the first instance.
All-Ireland champions
They were closer to being functional than fabulous All-Ireland champions in 2021. If that seems a tad harsh, winning just six out of 14 championship games in the three seasons that followed told its own unflattering story.
That included the feeblest of title defences in 2022, which culminated in an aggregate 17-point reversal to Derry and Armagh, a double score hammering from Kerry in the 2023 quarter-final and a first ever championship exit to Roscommon 12 months later.
That’s the form of an ordinary middle-of-the-pack group, not fallen champions primed for a rebound.
O’Rourke’s task was to take that group and build a team to contend again. Even in reaching last year’s semi-final there was a sense of an overreach, even if the six-point margin to the Kingdom bettered the double-digit beatings suffered by both Armagh and Donegal at the champions’ hands.
What was different was how O’Rourke set up his team, which was ballsy as he sought to go man to man rather than take shelter in the more zonal approach favoured by Kieran McGeeney and Jim McGuinness.
The downside is that it laid bare a deficit in physicality, intensity and quality which might not have been exposed in the scoreline – Kerry pulled up hard in the final quarter and converted just one out of five goal chances created – but it was hard to ignore.
There is little evidence that has been addressed over the spring. Of course, there have been mitigating factors, key players missing such as the long-term absence of Padraig Hampsey, Kieran McGeary’s spring break, the delayed returns of the likes of Ruairi Canavan, Darren McCurry and Niall Devlin all fall under that.
But that is all par for the course in league football, what has been absent is a sense this is a group that is developing an identity as in what exactly are they really good at?
That is a hard one to figure-out; defensively they managed just one shut-out (in the final round against Cork) this spring, and that lack of physicality in their rearguard continues to jar.
At the other end, they possess an attack that seems to play in moments more than one with an overarching strategic threat.
Green Shoots
There have been some green shoots, not least with the emergence of Ethan Jordan, who after a few seasons spent playing soccer with Armagh City, marked his debut against Kildare by hitting 1–9, a tally he matched when making his Croke Park debut in round six against Meath.
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Ethan Jordan in action for Tyrone against Kildare. Lorcan Doherty / INPHO
Lorcan Doherty / INPHO / INPHO
Eoin McElholm’s potential hardly needs stating, but the Loughmacrory man’s presence is a reminder that the dividend from Tyrone’s underage success is a long way from delivery.
To be fair, it is early days yet and Joey Clarke, Conor O’Neill, Ruari McCullagh and Ronan Cassidy all have got game time this spring, but the surprise is that Calum Daly, a key figure in those back to back U20 wins has not made the step-up.
The biggest surprise of all is how the jet-heeled Shea O’Hare, who was the U20 player of the year in 2024, has been cut from the panel after just one season.
Perhaps, as Jordan, who was an Ulster U20 winner in 2020, serves to remind, it is only with time and space that the true value of those underage successes will reveal itself.
In the meantime, though, there is a sense that little has changed in terms of Tyrone’s well-being being borne on the weight of a handful of shoulders, such as Conn Kilpatrick, Brian Kennedy, Mattie Donnelly and the genius that is Darragh Canavan.
Niall Morgan
There was a time when Niall Morgan would have been automatically name-checked as part of that group, but there has been a tapering in his form to the point that he was out of the team for the last three rounds of the league while he has hinted at disaffection with the direction the game has taken.
Once a maverick fly keeper, being literally put in his box has not suited the two-time All-Star, who has subscribed to Kieran McGeeney’s theory that kicking the ball out these days is less a skill and merely an act of facilitating the piggery of contested kick-outs.
But what McGeeney says and does are two different things. Last year, Armagh may have won by just a point, but it did not happen by accident, as Ethan Rafferty retained 23 of his 24 kick-outs, a number that Morgan and Tyrone could not match.
This spring, McGeeney has looked to Blaine Hughes to ensure that there is more flexibility on kick-out options as Armagh’s capacity to take care of their kick-out continues to reach levels others can’t.
‘It has definitely diminished,’ said Morgan of his role earlier this year.
‘There’s a very small element of skill and a very large element of who is going to throw their body in (for a break) now,’ he argued.
It might just be one element of a new game, but seeing the skill in bending the odds to your favour and throwing your body on the line as a non-negotiable is where Tyrone needs to get to.
Anything less on Sunday and they will not have a ghost of a chance.
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Missing key players, poor league, defensive issues: can Tyrone turn it around?
IT IS HARD to imagine a time when a Tyrone team hit the championship not so much as a dark horse, but more like a ghost one.
An animal that borrows its capacity to menace more from battles past than from the current form book.
Armagh coach Conleth Gilligan echoed that this week when, light on specifics, he was heavy on caution.
‘It makes it very dangerous, it’s still Tyrone,’ he warned.
Perhaps, but just not like we know them.
Gilligan’s caution is both understandable and judicious. After all, it is less than 12 months ago when only Rory Grugan’s buzzer beater was all that separated the teams in a gripping Ulster semi-final.
And, in the bigger picture, Tyrone went deeper in the subsequent All-Ireland race than the defending champions, while history – much of it penned in the Mickey Harte era via the backdoor – informs the Red Hands are never more dangerous than when written off.
We hear you, but that is back to history, which is a lot more comforting for them than the present.
League Campaign
Tyrone have just come off a league campaign so poor it’s a struggle to find something that compares.
Deemed shoo-ins for promotion out of Division 2, they came much closer to relegation, managing just two wins.
You have to go back to 1992/93 for the county to have endured a more miserable league when, in an attempt to put some structure on the competition, four groups of eight were pulled out of a hat and the Red Hands performed so poorly in theirs they ended up as a Division 3 team for the 93/94 league.
Back then, Tyrone did not rank as one of the game’s genuine heavyweights while status in a league that straddled the fag end of one calendar year and the pre-season of another was neither something to be cherished nor ashamed of.
In other words, this feels like a brand new shiny low.
If that feels like an over reaction to a couple of underwhelming months, it has to be seen in the context of where they were 20 months ago, when Malachy O’Rourke succeeded Brian Dooher and Feargal Logan.
In snapping up Ballygawley-based O’Rourke, they had secured the services of arguably the most sought after brains in the game while timing also seemed to be his friend, taking over as the county’s production line gifted him one All-Ireland U20 winning squad, which would beget another 12 months later.
So, what has gone wrong? Perhaps not as much as people think. The giddiness O’Rourke’s appointment invited ignored the reality of where he found Tyrone in the first instance.
All-Ireland champions
They were closer to being functional than fabulous All-Ireland champions in 2021. If that seems a tad harsh, winning just six out of 14 championship games in the three seasons that followed told its own unflattering story.
That included the feeblest of title defences in 2022, which culminated in an aggregate 17-point reversal to Derry and Armagh, a double score hammering from Kerry in the 2023 quarter-final and a first ever championship exit to Roscommon 12 months later.
That’s the form of an ordinary middle-of-the-pack group, not fallen champions primed for a rebound.
O’Rourke’s task was to take that group and build a team to contend again. Even in reaching last year’s semi-final there was a sense of an overreach, even if the six-point margin to the Kingdom bettered the double-digit beatings suffered by both Armagh and Donegal at the champions’ hands.
What was different was how O’Rourke set up his team, which was ballsy as he sought to go man to man rather than take shelter in the more zonal approach favoured by Kieran McGeeney and Jim McGuinness.
The downside is that it laid bare a deficit in physicality, intensity and quality which might not have been exposed in the scoreline – Kerry pulled up hard in the final quarter and converted just one out of five goal chances created – but it was hard to ignore.
There is little evidence that has been addressed over the spring. Of course, there have been mitigating factors, key players missing such as the long-term absence of Padraig Hampsey, Kieran McGeary’s spring break, the delayed returns of the likes of Ruairi Canavan, Darren McCurry and Niall Devlin all fall under that.
But that is all par for the course in league football, what has been absent is a sense this is a group that is developing an identity as in what exactly are they really good at?
That is a hard one to figure-out; defensively they managed just one shut-out (in the final round against Cork) this spring, and that lack of physicality in their rearguard continues to jar.
At the other end, they possess an attack that seems to play in moments more than one with an overarching strategic threat.
Green Shoots
There have been some green shoots, not least with the emergence of Ethan Jordan, who after a few seasons spent playing soccer with Armagh City, marked his debut against Kildare by hitting 1–9, a tally he matched when making his Croke Park debut in round six against Meath.
Eoin McElholm’s potential hardly needs stating, but the Loughmacrory man’s presence is a reminder that the dividend from Tyrone’s underage success is a long way from delivery.
To be fair, it is early days yet and Joey Clarke, Conor O’Neill, Ruari McCullagh and Ronan Cassidy all have got game time this spring, but the surprise is that Calum Daly, a key figure in those back to back U20 wins has not made the step-up.
The biggest surprise of all is how the jet-heeled Shea O’Hare, who was the U20 player of the year in 2024, has been cut from the panel after just one season.
Perhaps, as Jordan, who was an Ulster U20 winner in 2020, serves to remind, it is only with time and space that the true value of those underage successes will reveal itself.
In the meantime, though, there is a sense that little has changed in terms of Tyrone’s well-being being borne on the weight of a handful of shoulders, such as Conn Kilpatrick, Brian Kennedy, Mattie Donnelly and the genius that is Darragh Canavan.
Niall Morgan
There was a time when Niall Morgan would have been automatically name-checked as part of that group, but there has been a tapering in his form to the point that he was out of the team for the last three rounds of the league while he has hinted at disaffection with the direction the game has taken.
Once a maverick fly keeper, being literally put in his box has not suited the two-time All-Star, who has subscribed to Kieran McGeeney’s theory that kicking the ball out these days is less a skill and merely an act of facilitating the piggery of contested kick-outs.
But what McGeeney says and does are two different things. Last year, Armagh may have won by just a point, but it did not happen by accident, as Ethan Rafferty retained 23 of his 24 kick-outs, a number that Morgan and Tyrone could not match.
This spring, McGeeney has looked to Blaine Hughes to ensure that there is more flexibility on kick-out options as Armagh’s capacity to take care of their kick-out continues to reach levels others can’t.
‘It has definitely diminished,’ said Morgan of his role earlier this year.
‘There’s a very small element of skill and a very large element of who is going to throw their body in (for a break) now,’ he argued.
It might just be one element of a new game, but seeing the skill in bending the odds to your favour and throwing your body on the line as a non-negotiable is where Tyrone needs to get to.
Anything less on Sunday and they will not have a ghost of a chance.
*****
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