This will sound odd but it’s genuinely sincere.
Tyrone are not a defensive team. Let that sink in for a minute.
They play counter-attacking football, sure. They flood numbers back and they protect their goalmouths for all their worth but their intention is to cut teams open at break-neck speed when they have the ball and they do it time and again.
Across three games in the Ulster championship this season, they’ve racked up 3-60.
You only need to look at the players on their side – those guys are not designed to play purely conservative football.
Look at their half back line on Sunday for God’s sake – Tiernan McCann and Peter Harte are two of the finest ball-players and athletes in the land and Padraig Hampsey went up and helped himself to three points in an Ulster final.
It doesn’t suit them to sit on the back foot all the time – they have too many talents who want to attack, too many other boys like Sludden, like Donnelly, like Conall McCann and Sean Cavanagh who are too good at going forward to keep them back – but their dour encounter with Mayo in the All-Ireland quarter-final has threatened to completely encapsulate this team.
Some things were lost from that game:
- Sean Cavanagh got sent off
- They were playing Mayo
Tiernan McCann was interviewed on The GAA Hour on Monday and asked why they were so conservative in that game. His response was pure common sense.
“That’s not intentional,” the half back told Colm Parkinson.
“The higher the opposition, there are more men that need marked because they have more dangerous forwards so maybe we have three or four marking so there’s only six or seven that can go [on the break].
“That’s not something deliberate.
“We’ll soon see going into the last eight, when we’re playing against top quality opposition, what way it will work out.
“Sometimes when we play those teams, they’re happy to play three or four up. Not to use the word ‘cheating’ but sometimes when a forward stays up, you can’t send boys up the field.”
Listen to the full interview below from 21:30.
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