Tyrone v Monaghan, Sun 20th May, Healy Park

[Gabriel_Hurl]

1 N Morgan

2 P Hamspey
3 R McNamee
4 C McCarron

5 T McCann
6 F Burns
7 P Harte

8 C Cavanagh
9 M Donnelly

10 C McShane
11 N Sludden
12 C Meyler

13 L Brennan
14 C McAliskey
15 M Bradley

16 M O'Neill
17 R Brennan
18 R Donnelly
19 C McCann
20 D McClure
21 A McCrory
22 HP McGeary
23 K McGeary
24 M McKernan
25 P McNulty
26 R O'Neill

[The Trap]

Normally the team he picks plays.....if McCann and cavanagh start it is a massive gamble as they have played no football. Saw McCann against moy in league and he was terrible.
If Monaghan have a full deck and the Hughes and McManus are on song they have a great chance.

[square_ball]

There's not going to be much impact coming from that bench to be honest. Think we'll win but not saying that with any degree of confidence.

[DuffleKing]

That named Tyrone forward line is very small - only McCarron has any height

[seafoid]

Tyrone a bit unlucky with the draw. Cavan or Armagh would have been an easier start.

[Fuzzman]

For a man that sees no club games you make some random selections.

For a man that sees no club games 13 out of 15 isn't bad.
Did you even try to name a team?

I hope McAliskey gets back to decent form, as he can be a great player but thought he had a quiet enough league.
How's he playing for Clonoe?

Is Mulgrew in the squad and just not named or is he out? He would be the only forward that you would get excited about coming on though Roanie has a habit of coming on in the last 15 and scoring a goal or 2.

Am I right to say of the 11 "named" subs that only Ronan O'Neill is the only recognized forward or would you include Richie in that as well?

Has it always been this hard to get tickets for the stand? Only 4 per club is that right?
I'd say the ref will have his job cut out for him on Sunday.

No doubt O'Rourke will have them well fired up for a battle and saying this is our best chance to beat these feckers in their own back yard. It's always a feisty game between the two anyway in Clones but I'd say teams come to Omagh intent on making a big statement .

It will be interesting to see how we deal with McManus now that he has a few others around him and are not just a one man forward line. You'd imagine CC will be sitting in front of him with I'd say Hampsey marking him. I hope not McNamee but maybe McCarron.

[GrandMasterFlash]

Most of the media points towards a Tyrone victory, and that the time is now for a more balanced Tyrone approach, the errors of the Dublin game being in the distant past and Mickey Harte has reincarnated once more, etc.

Whilst I agree somewhat it sets it up nicely for Monaghan, who are also no doubt confident of doing the business. I was more confident at the start of the week than I am now.. the confidence being usurped by nervous butterflies.. As has been stated Monaghan need to go at them from the start, and dictate the terms of play. If they get drawn into a dog-fight I feel we'll lose, as discipline in high pressure games like this has been a problem for us in the past. Based on this my starting team would be:

           R Beggan,
R Wylie, C Boyle, C Walshe
K O'Connell, D Wylie, F Kelly
       N Kierans, D Hughes
D Ward, C McCarthy, R McAnespie
J McCarron, K Hughes, C McManus

Subs: S Garland, V Corey, K Duffy, O Duffy, D Mone, N McAdam, P McKenna, T Kerr, B Kerr, D Malone, David Garland

If Boyle doesn't make it D Wylie to FB and K Duffy/V Corey to CHB. Kelly could start in the HF line pushing McAnespie to the bench and moving K Duffy/V Corey to wing HB.

As has been said of Tyrone, numbers on jerseys are largely academic. Monaghan will need serious pace (to both attack and defend..) and more importantly discipline..

[blewuporstuffed]

That's a pretty strong looking Monaghan team on paper.
What sort of form has jack mccarron been in this year?
After a great league last year he had a very disappointing championship overall

[GrandMasterFlash]

That's a pretty strong looking Monaghan team on paper.
What sort of form has jack mccarron been in this year?
After a great league last year he had a very disappointing championship overall

He's been in good form. Started a few games and brought on in others to good effect, most notably in the Dub game.. He does a serious amount of work off the ball, which is not typical for an inside forward and doesn't really get noticed. I like this aspect about him.

You're right thought, last year his league form definitely did not translate into C'ship.. Mind you, there was a sight of talk and hype about him last year, which I don't think helped his cause. There has been significantly less this year, which may help.

An in form full forward line of himself, K Hughes and McManus will give any team plenty to think about. Of course only any 2 of them (and maybe even 1!) will remain 'inside' at any given time. I mean, this is not the halcyon days of the 80s'.. 

[Schkite]

Yeah his form is better than last year's championship, though he's never hit the heights of last year's league. But he's been fairly steady all spring at the same time and finished the league off strong with a good performance against Dublin and a cracking goal. Maybe no harm as you say that there's no hype about him this time going into the championship, he'll have learned alot from last year.

The addition of Kearns to the team might be one of the biggest boosts to the forward line - in that it frees up Kieran Hughes to go up front where he can be a very effective target man and take a few scores. Kearns had a great 1st league and brings a bit more of a presence to midfield, and you still have the option of bringing Kieran back there too at times like for kickouts etc.

[Fuzzman]

Just read this in the Irish News

Tyrone have won six of the last seven Championship meetings with the Farney county.

Can anyone remember when we last met them in Omagh in the first round?

That full forward line will take a lot of watching and you imagine you'll see a lot of high ball kicked in to test our FB line early on. I can see us revert to a very defensive system for the first half at least as that FF line has goals in them and they can all win their own ball so I can't see them being left one on one much.

We will find it much harder to kick long ball into our FF line and so I can see us reverting back to a running game with a lot more off the shoulder passing that we saw in the league.
If Monaghan score a goal early on and Lee Brennan has to go off injured then who do we look to on the bench? Hmmm. Ronan O'Neill?

I'm only reading Sean Cavanagh's article now. I agree with him about us reverting to how we played last year.

https://www.independent.ie/sport/gaelic-games/gaelic-football/no-one-knows-where-tyrone-are-at-sean-cavanagh-hoping-to-see-impact-of-stephen-oneill-in-red-hand-attack-36915715.html

For all but one of Sean Cavanagh's 16 seasons with Tyrone, he served the one master and the former Red Hand captain knows a little more about Mickey Harte than most.

"Mickey's certainly the boss," Cavanagh responds when asked whether players have an input in team meetings. "No, no, you don't stand up, no. Mickey's very single-minded in his approach and I think anyone who knows him (feels the same)."

Cavanagh details "quite an autocratic style" of leadership during Harte's lengthy reign and doubts whether Tyrone will adopt a more attacking approach against Monaghan following their harrowing All-Ireland SFC semi-final loss to Dublin last August.

Former Footballer of the Year Stephen O'Neill was drafted into the backroom team by Harte to add a fresh attacking impetus and his influence has been lauded but Cavanagh questions whether they will revert to type when the pressure comes on.

"I've heard decent reports that Stevie's having a bit of input on the training ground so you would hope that that's starting to show. Some of the scores they put up during the league, you would hope that's the hallmarks of that work," the Moy clubman says.

"Sunday will tell the tale. It's only when you're put into that championship game where Mickey feels threatened, it'll be interesting to see if he reverts to what he knows or whether he goes and pushes that bit more.

"No one really knows exactly where this Tyrone team is at the moment. Most people don't like the idea of Tyrone continuing to defend as much as we had been doing, so everyone is waiting on unleashing another couple of attackers or a new formation."

Would he have sacrificed an Ulster title to play more expansive football?

"It's easy to say it now but at the time, genuinely, and this is the big thing, when you're an inter-county footballer, and Mickey is a very convincing manager as well, whenever you're in that zone, you think nothing else but what Mickey is telling you.

"It's only on reflection afterwards that you realise that you would have liked maybe to try something different. At the time I was 100pc convinced that we'd win an All-Ireland last year.

"I'm getting to see with the bit of media work that I'm doing, you realise that as a player you take offence so easily. When someone tries to run down your team or you personally, you think automatically and assume they're out to get you and have an agenda.

"When you take a step back out of it all you do see the other see and realise that it's not always the case and that some people outside of your bubble are right and you're not right."

Similar
The five-time All-Star expects a cagey affair similar to last Sunday's Galway/Mayo slugfest with exciting attackers Lee Brennan and Mark Bradley likely to lead the line against the Farney men in the Ulster SFC quarter-final tie on home soil in Omagh.

His former team-mate Conor Gormley was firm in his belief that the Red Hand are lacking marquee forwards but Cavanagh disagrees and feels many quality attackers have gone by the wayside as a result of the system employed, name-checking the likes of Ronan O'Neill, Darren McCurry, Kyle Coney and Niall McKenna.

"We haven't really played with any structure in the forward unit, that's probably the best way of putting it. There's been a flood of guys who probably have suffered because we haven't played with six attackers," the 35-year-old outlines.

"And some of those guys have obviously fallen away and aren't on the panel anymore. That's probably not all their own fault. If I'm honest, it's just the way the system, or the type of football, has gone. Some of those type of players have suffered.

"Some of those guys I would have called marquee, and thought they would be marquee. But because they never had that room to breathe and because some of them couldn't cope with having to spend more time on the bench, because we were going towards a certain type of player, they struggled.

"They were victims of the system, that's exactly what they were. It's sad that, because some of them have as much talent or possibly more talent than some of the older (guys), the guys that were on some of the older teams that myself and Conor played on.

"But they just haven't been given that opportunity to play, which is just tough. Quite a number of those players are forward players that have gone through confidence issues that if they'd been playing in a system that....you know, Tyrone naturally don't kick the ball much.

"And then being pulled ashore and fall down the pecking order. They're all there and you should see some of the stuff they do at training but unfortunately they don't have the confidence or don't have the... are maybe not stuck with the same way when the game would be 15 v 15.

"When things aren't going well there's a temptation for Mickey to go for a different style of player, a style of player that works hard and labours around the midfield and that can run the ball quick through the hands."

[seafoid]

Just read this in the Irish News

Tyrone have won six of the last seven Championship meetings with the Farney county.

Can anyone remember when we last met them in Omagh in the first round?

That full forward line will take a lot of watching and you imagine you'll see a lot of high ball kicked in to test our FB line early on. I can see us revert to a very defensive system for the first half at least as that FF line has goals in them and they can all win their own ball so I can't see them being left one on one much.

We will find it much harder to kick long ball into our FF line and so I can see us reverting back to a running game with a lot more off the shoulder passing that we saw in the league.
If Monaghan score a goal early on and Lee Brennan has to go off injured then who do we look to on the bench? Hmmm. Ronan O'Neill?

I'm only reading Sean Cavanagh's article now. I agree with him about us reverting to how we played last year.

https://www.independent.ie/sport/gaelic-games/gaelic-football/no-one-knows-where-tyrone-are-at-sean-cavanagh-hoping-to-see-impact-of-stephen-oneill-in-red-hand-attack-36915715.html

For all but one of Sean Cavanagh's 16 seasons with Tyrone, he served the one master and the former Red Hand captain knows a little more about Mickey Harte than most.

"Mickey's certainly the boss," Cavanagh responds when asked whether players have an input in team meetings. "No, no, you don't stand up, no. Mickey's very single-minded in his approach and I think anyone who knows him (feels the same)."

Cavanagh details "quite an autocratic style" of leadership during Harte's lengthy reign and doubts whether Tyrone will adopt a more attacking approach against Monaghan following their harrowing All-Ireland SFC semi-final loss to Dublin last August.

Former Footballer of the Year Stephen O'Neill was drafted into the backroom team by Harte to add a fresh attacking impetus and his influence has been lauded but Cavanagh questions whether they will revert to type when the pressure comes on.

"I've heard decent reports that Stevie's having a bit of input on the training ground so you would hope that that's starting to show. Some of the scores they put up during the league, you would hope that's the hallmarks of that work," the Moy clubman says.

"Sunday will tell the tale. It's only when you're put into that championship game where Mickey feels threatened, it'll be interesting to see if he reverts to what he knows or whether he goes and pushes that bit more.

"No one really knows exactly where this Tyrone team is at the moment. Most people don't like the idea of Tyrone continuing to defend as much as we had been doing, so everyone is waiting on unleashing another couple of attackers or a new formation."

Would he have sacrificed an Ulster title to play more expansive football?

"It's easy to say it now but at the time, genuinely, and this is the big thing, when you're an inter-county footballer, and Mickey is a very convincing manager as well, whenever you're in that zone, you think nothing else but what Mickey is telling you.

"It's only on reflection afterwards that you realise that you would have liked maybe to try something different. At the time I was 100pc convinced that we'd win an All-Ireland last year.

"I'm getting to see with the bit of media work that I'm doing, you realise that as a player you take offence so easily. When someone tries to run down your team or you personally, you think automatically and assume they're out to get you and have an agenda.

"When you take a step back out of it all you do see the other see and realise that it's not always the case and that some people outside of your bubble are right and you're not right."

Similar
The five-time All-Star expects a cagey affair similar to last Sunday's Galway/Mayo slugfest with exciting attackers Lee Brennan and Mark Bradley likely to lead the line against the Farney men in the Ulster SFC quarter-final tie on home soil in Omagh.

His former team-mate Conor Gormley was firm in his belief that the Red Hand are lacking marquee forwards but Cavanagh disagrees and feels many quality attackers have gone by the wayside as a result of the system employed, name-checking the likes of Ronan O'Neill, Darren McCurry, Kyle Coney and Niall McKenna.

"We haven't really played with any structure in the forward unit, that's probably the best way of putting it. There's been a flood of guys who probably have suffered because we haven't played with six attackers," the 35-year-old outlines.

"And some of those guys have obviously fallen away and aren't on the panel anymore. That's probably not all their own fault. If I'm honest, it's just the way the system, or the type of football, has gone. Some of those type of players have suffered.

"Some of those guys I would have called marquee, and thought they would be marquee. But because they never had that room to breathe and because some of them couldn't cope with having to spend more time on the bench, because we were going towards a certain type of player, they struggled.

"They were victims of the system, that's exactly what they were. It's sad that, because some of them have as much talent or possibly more talent than some of the older (guys), the guys that were on some of the older teams that myself and Conor played on.

"But they just haven't been given that opportunity to play, which is just tough. Quite a number of those players are forward players that have gone through confidence issues that if they'd been playing in a system that....you know, Tyrone naturally don't kick the ball much.

"And then being pulled ashore and fall down the pecking order. They're all there and you should see some of the stuff they do at training but unfortunately they don't have the confidence or don't have the... are maybe not stuck with the same way when the game would be 15 v 15.

"When things aren't going well there's a temptation for Mickey to go for a different style of player, a style of player that works hard and labours around the midfield and that can run the ball quick through the hands."

Mickey has similarities with Arsene Wenger. 3 titles quite a while ago, a long period in charge and the team some way off the required standard. Or maybe not. Let's see on Sunday

[Fuzzman]

Great comparison Seafoid. Would never have thought of it myself. And did you really need to quote the whole post to say that. Think of those on their phones.


I'd presume most ALL neutrals will be supporting Monaghan on Sunday.
Who's the ref?

[Ball Hopper]

Great comparison Seafoid. Would never have thought of it myself. And did you really need to quote the whole post to say that. Think of those on their phones.


I'd presume most ALL neutrals will be supporting Monaghan on Sunday.
Who's the ref?

David Coldrick

[omaghjoe]

Great comparison Seafoid. Would never have thought of it myself. And did you really need to quote the whole post to say that. Think of those on their phones.


I'd presume most ALL neutrals will be supporting Monaghan on Sunday.
Who's the ref?

David Coldrick