Not what you expect to find.
After an impressive Leinster campaign Dublin came into the 2008 All-Ireland quarter final against Tyrone as favourites.
The rain was coming down and that was meant to slightly favour Tyrone, and it did, they won.
Mickey Harte’s men won in convincing fashion, in the end, the scoreline finished 3-14 to 1-08. Tyrone had blown Peter ‘Pillar’ Caffrey’s side out of the water, winning by 12 points.
The losing manager was speaking at an event hosted by GAA Hour host Colm Parkinson and he retold the tale of the scenes after the match.
As per tradition the losing manager went to congratulate the winning team and wish them the best of the luck for the rest of the tournament and Pillar’s anecdote basically summed up Tyrone all in one.
On the latest episode of the GAA Hour Parkinson told listeners what the Dublin manager saw that fateful day.
“He went into the opposition’s dressing room, Tyrone’s dressing room after the game to do that traditional thing,” Parkinson said on the show.
“There was no one in the Tyrone dressing room so he went across over anyways and he could hear them in the warm up room.
“So he went to go into the warm up room and there was someone on the other side of the door that wouldn’t let him in.
“So, Pillar is a big enough man so he said he drove the shoulder through it and knocked your man out of the way and went in to give the speech to the Tyrone lads who were all stretching and dong whatever they were doing and he saw down the end of the warm up room there was a life size photo of Alan Brogan celebrating a goal,” Parkinson concluded.
There is little doubting that Brogan was, in fact, targetted that day as that was also recounted on the GAA Hour.
All teams target to some extent and Steven McDonnell, who has had plenty of experience playing with Tyrone for Armagh gave his take on their psyche.
“We’ve used images of players and newspaper reports of players in the past, I think every team has done that. You go into a dressing room in Croke Park and you see headlines across the wall and sometimes it works in a positive way and sometimes it maybe makes a team go out and they’re too uptight but certainly for Tyrone if that’s what they have to use it works more times than most for them so they’ve got to use it.”
You can listen to the full show below.
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