Messages

With the recent departures of lads from the Tyrone panel what is now the panel count?  Is there 30 plus players readily available?  You would need 30 plus players to be able to play in house games for the next six weeks in preparation of the Donegal game.

How is Joe McMahon getting on with his studies,  I'm wondering if he is worth carrying on the panel for the Donegal game, he's a guy that brings immense experience and 'grit' and goes without saying, he's a leader. I'm wondering if Gavin Devlin could bring Kyle Coney back into the fray?  There is certainly a argument for him to be 'coaxed' back to county football.  Management must be considering every possibility since Sunday last.  Niall McKenna is another option that might or could be worked on.

Agree 100% with you Redhand on the refereering aspect to yesterdays game,  the problem with this lies with the inconsistency of refereering.  What is a tackle and what is not a tackle?  Each referee has completely different interuption to a tackle.  How is this then coached technically by trainers/coaches?  Its outside the control of players and Management. Without question,  Tyrone full back line has been extremely consistent in this league campaign and I have been impressed by McNamee, McCrory and McCarron over the games.  You correctly point out the cuteness of Donegal,  but on the flip side of that,  Tyrone should be well aware of these small areas of Donegals game and by now we should be trying to counter act these in some shape or form. As mad a suggestion it might be but is it time to move away from the skin tight tops and back to older more loose styled top to accentuate the quick pull back by opponents that now goes un-noticed, unbooked?   Michael Murphys frees again could be looked at, would there be any possibility of putting him off his stride?  I did notice (I stand corrected if wrong) that Michael Murphy kicked a free wide in the second half, third quarter,  but seconds before his kick Peter Harte walked across the path of the ball (intentionally or not, I'm unsure).  Two years ago Donegal focused on Morgans kicks,  this year Tyrone need to be coming with new ideas, new forward thinking strategies to counter act Donegals strong points. It will be difficult in Ballybofey at the best of times, but a no show would be unbearable.  It will be a great battle in Healy Park come Sunday another massive yardstick for Tyrone to measure against the 2014 All Ireland Champions. 

Made the journey to Ballybofey yesterday,  bleak situation Mickey finds himself in with only a few short weeks to revisiting Donegal on the same sod again.  Hard to envisage the tables getting turned with a Tyrone win in May.  On the face of things it seemed we lacked any type of strategy, at best it was haphazzard. There seemed no plan on how to break down the 15 man Donegal blockade, certainly nothing new about Donegals game plan in last 4 years.  Our counter attack lacked pace, precision and cutting edge, it was laboured, predictable and Donegal could easily choke our attack to death.  70-80% of Donegal scores came from over-turned ball on a Tyrone attack.  We seemed extremely weak in the tackle and certainly there appeared no spear head for our forward attack. The forward fist pass process to the full forwards wasnt possible against the Donegal defensive blockade.  It would have taken a sonar device on the ball to make its way into them.  I wonder if Tyrone would have opted for some height within their Full Forward line and test an 'isolated' Donegal full back line, by whipping quick and fast high diagonal ball into the scoring zone on the counter attack,  it might have yielded something, at a minimum the high ball would have cut out at least 12 defenders if nothing else.  Mickey and his back room staff find themselves again in dark waters,  I sincerely hope he can turn this one around as it will be extremely hard to stomach another defeat to Donegal in Ballybofey in a few weeks time.

A seeded League/Championship proposal would make it interesting, could definitely be the way forward.  Would this view be mirrored for the Reserve Championship as well,  based in the Reserve League?  Might even get the reserve league a little more competitive and prevent clubs from not fielding reserve teams.

I agree with U21 comments - Majority of U21's are playing senior/reserve football, hence the 2 week July break leaves alot of clubs in a bad positions with eligible u21 players booking holidays for the 2 week July break unknowingly.  I think there needs to be a better resolution around the U21 competition because its such an important competition with regards to re-figorating young players who have been lost from minor football.

Good to see a vast improvement from the Tyrone team yesterday.  Their tackling, harassing, defending in numbers, support play and work rate was the difference.  Hopefully they can continue to improve.

When is the Club Championship Draw expected to take place,  and when is the league fixtures release date expected to be?

From Saturday nights game it is looking more and more as though Tyrone are certainly going to have a few difficult years ahead.  I feel Mickey has a very tough job ahead of him and I certainly do not feel it is his 'fault'.  Tyrone just don't have those physical players at their disposal nor those work horses that are prepared to go that extra few miles. 

We lack seriously in some areas and non more so than the middle third.  We don't have primary ball winners and in the past this was compensated with players who had the unbelievable skill, nohow, hunger and determination to win secondary possession in terms of break ball, tackling, harassing, blocking runs etc.  As Canavan commented, players with the hunger of P Jordan, B McGuigan, D Harte, B Dooher, E McGinley, K Hughes, C Holmes, C Gormley. M Penrose etc are just not evident anymore. 

A telling sign on Saturday night was when I watched Niall Morgan go on 3 or 4 attacking drives out of his defence and he actually passed at least 7-8 of his own Tyrone players and when he did look up he found himself in 'no mans land' with no one supporting him.  This surely shows the lack of drive, work rate and ambition in this existing squad of players.  Tyrone could struggle to gain any more than maybe 4 points in the league,  they will struggle with Donegal in Ballybofey in championship and quite possibly find it difficult in the qualifiers.  Though lets hope not.

A quarter final place in the championship is now not a given anymore,  but a bonus.  Tyrone to stay in division 1 in 2015 will be a major boost for building toward the future.

Any word on who is getting trials with Tyrone this year?  Will there be any notable additions?  Dan McNulty?

Any team with the calibre of Gormley, Penrose, Mark Donnelly,  Caolan Daly, Mickey Donaghy, Pol McAleer, Munroe, Ruairi Loughran, Mickey Slane, Colm McGurk and Big Plunky should never be discounted as possible championship winners. They will fancy getting to a county final for sure. 

Friday night's Senior Div 1 Reserve Final should be a quality game of football and I would expect plenty of good skill on display.  There can be no argument that Division 1 Reserve football can be as fast flowing and exciting as some division 2 and division 3 senior championship games.  It would be great if some of these Reserve games got a little more exposure.  You will find little or no build up to this game at all, and as far as I know, it's the only Tyrone GAA Men's Club Football game being played this weekend.  You will not find any coverage of it on TeamTalk Mag website or on the Tyrone GAA website which is a real pity for the clubs and especially the young players involved.  What a game it will be,  it's a mixture of youth and experience.  Both their senior teams have at least contested major honours at this level in last few months (Clonoe County Champions sen & res & senior League semi's - Ardbo the League final).  Clonoe have a great reserve team, the experience of Martin Hughes, Damien Campbell, Shane Hagan, Shane McCann with the youth of Rys Quinn, Fintan McClure etc they certainly have the upper hand.  Ardbo should have the experience of quality players Gavin Wylie, Paul Coney, Simon Teague, Tomas Wylie mixed with the minor winners like Peter O'Neill, Kevin Coney etc.  Its sure to be a decent game of football.  It's a real shame there isnt more exposure to this Division 1 County Final.

Disappointed with yesterday.  The dynamics of the team just doesn't seem correct.  Don't get me wrong,  Monaghan won by the finest of margins!  Though, there seems to be something missing?  I wouldn't argue with any of the players ability from 1 to 30, they are all fine ballers in their own right, but Tyrone seem to lack a little bit of cohesion.  This is something they can get right quickly enough. On the face of it,  there does seem to be a lot of individualisms.  On my observations,  is Tyrone getting the best of Peter Harte at WHB??  Would he be more suited at CHF???  Is Sean Cavanagh best at Centre field or could he add a new dimension at full forward?? Would Kyle Coney play his best football at WHF, or centre field where he can get a little more 'space'?  Niall McKenna was a miss yesterday going on the replay game in Newry. I would like to see PJ Lavery,  PJ Quinn, Conor McAliskey, Shay McGuigan all get their chances in the qualifying games,  these guys have serious potential.  Unfortunately management needs to curtail Morgan's expeditions out field! Fine player,  but he needs to concentrate fully on his 'possession restarts' and direct and talk more from the back.  There is one thing for sure,  Managment needs to get the spine of his team settled sooner rather than later if they are to make an impact this summer.  At present no one can name the team that would face Louth,  that in itself doesn't seem right,  we all could name the Dublin/Donegal/Kerry/Cork teams to one or two positions, but certainly not the Tyrone team.  There is a lot of supporters calling for Mickeys head,  I cant envisage any changes at the head for a while,  though what I would say is, maybe its time for Mickey to freshen things up in his back room staff etc. Finally four tough championship games (2 x Down, 1 x Monaghan, 1 Club Championship) in 28 days (4 weeks) that surely has had an effect on those players!  No one could argue with that.  .