Tyrone v Westmeath - 10/03/12 - 19.30

[Fear ón Srath Bán]

Too much negativity I'd say - despite being in division 2 we're looking in better shape at this stage of the footballing year than we have done for almost a decade. True, still some defensive concerns, and midfield can be concerningly muffled (as last night, largely down to the excellent John Heslin), but the 15 as unit, plus a very strong bench leaves us very favourably placed. 

[ONeill]

Whilst there's no Fay Devlin on the side, the fitness levels will hopefully leave no man exposed or allow a star forward to breathe. Swarm the feck outta them and then swarm forward. Swarm swarm. Swarm.

[under the bar]

I hope you all had the good sense to lump it on Tyrone for the AI at 20/1 before the Kildare game.

[trileacman]

Whilst there's no Fay Devlin on the side, the fitness levels will hopefully leave no man exposed or allow a star forward to breathe. Swarm the feck outta them and then swarm forward. Swarm swarm. Swarm.

We'll meet teams as fit or fitter than ourselves. f**k your positivity lads, We're screwed! Harte out!! 

[tyssam5]

Whilst there's no Fay Devlin on the side, the fitness levels will hopefully leave no man exposed or allow a star forward to breathe. Swarm the feck outta them and then swarm forward. Swarm swarm. Swarm.

We'll meet teams as fit or fitter than ourselves. f**k your positivity lads, We're screwed! Harte out!! 

Fair points. We're going well but we'll need to see how we go I'm tighter games when we're on he back foot

[Radda bout yeee]

I'd be a little worried that we're still missing a top class 'shut down' corner back but time will tell.

This is the most important factor and something that is completely ignored by those who are fawning over play at the current time.

I've sat through many a National league and McKenna Cup and watched us sweep all before us with new names and youthful prospects. Come the Summer few of these actually make it. Attacking against Westmeath on a small wet pitch in March is one thing, defending against Cork or Dublin on a hard, fast pitch in Croker is another matter entirely.

Since about mid summer 2005 we have relied upon the All-Star capabilities of Conor Gormley to man-mark Gooch, Brogan's, Clarke, McDonnell, Bray, Coulter and all the other top 10 forwards in the GAA world. Block is now at the end of the road and I don't see the next All-star man-marker coming along. McCaul, McCarron were considered the answer at one point but now we see that attacking not defending is their forte. Quinn has been tried before and was shown up badly against a blunt enough Cork attack in '09, a year when we had real ambitions. Of the 10 backs who have played to date in this campaign mark out one who is a noteworthy defender. Our entire HB line is made up of attacking players. Our CHB Harte is not truly a defender, having played most of his career to date in the Half-Forwards. Justy has fallen out of form since '08 and the tactical move away from a bomber FF has not suited his style. The move forward up the pitch that we have all envisaged since he arrived on the scene has never materialised.

In real terms our best defence would consist of Block, Joe and probably Quinn as the axillary corner-back. Block is coming to the end of a fantastic career, Joe is a sweeper by trade not a FB (and Harte will probably not play him as the FB come summer either), Quinn is a decent defender but at all ireland level you are playing against the most lethal forwards in the game, one mistake and you'll be punished a la Cork goal '09, I'd worry about him.

This winning run and all is great but it isn't delivering to us what we really need. We'll have an ocean of half-backs and half forwards to pick form come championship, but a top-class man marker and a midfield able to combat Kerry, Dublin and Cork is what is needed. I'd rather see us lose to Meath/Galway and Quinn/McCrory give an unbelievable defensive performance than some more facile victories where the HB's run the show and our FB's stand like spectators.

Is Carlin not the best answer for the job - given his performance against Paddy Bradley this year?

[Croí na hÉireann]

Flirting with the idea of driving up and back for this, what's the N2 like these days?

If you need directions give me a shout 

Last time you gave me directions I got lost, I'm not relaying the directions to the team you know 

Ahem Mr Croi, I think you got lost cause you DIDN'T follow my instructions!

Taking directions from a woman, I've only myself to blame 

Anyways, pegged it up at the last minute on Sat and lucky for me I remembered something about the Gortin Road as I tried to make sense of your signposts. Yous are some hoors to clap every bout of good play, it was like an episode of the X Factor. From a Westmeath perspective I don't think we were as bad as the highlights showed yesterday. What killed us was our complete lack of a full forward line, if we had only 13 bodies we couldn't have done any worse as anything we kicked in there came straight back out. Took the first half arrival of Glennon to give us an option up there. While Tyrone had a host of wides, the ref made a couple of home town decisions that didn't help us when the game was still competitive, case in point being Gary "picking the ball off the ground". From my distant vantage point that ball was bouncing. The amount of yellows thrown around was ridiculous, again. Some of the examples they highlighted on League Sunday were crazy.

It wasn't a wasted trip though, Tyrone are at a much more advanced stage of their redevelopment and there was encouraging signs there for Westmeath. Ger Egan and Heslin are improving with every game and it would have been easy to drop the heads after Tyrone's second goal at the start of the 2nd half but the lads stuck at it and scored four or five points in a row. Despite being at fault for the goal Kevin Maguire is doing well in the corner. I would question Sharrys ability to hold the center and I don't think Natchie's role has proved successful. I'd stick him back in at wing back and let him reprise his 08 role of bombing up and down the wing.

Monaghan up next Sunday, must get a result here if we want to stay up, Glennon has to start if fit, thank Christ we're at home.

[Radda bout yeee]

Can't see the following featuring much in the championship due to comp for places:
McCrory
McNeice
PJ
McNabb

[Fuzzman]

Watched the game live on Sebanta and I'll be honest I was bored after 20 mins. Whilst I was delighted with our performance and the pace and workmanship, we were on a hiding to nothing playing them. No disrepect Croi.

You nearly always see the same where the game is over early on and then we get complacent and start making silly mistakes and bad shooting.

Still you can only beat what's in front of you and I'm very pleased what where we are so early on.
Of course we're not tested yet and its interesting to see the 4 teams we've beaten are the bottom 4 now in the league. We wouldn't have thought that at the start of the year.

Galway now could be a good test of how we perform away from home to a descent team. I know they started the year poorly but they seem to be going well again.

I think this talk of not having any great man markers is a wee bit OTT. Yes Block has lost a lot of pace as has Ricey but if you look around the country its hard to pick out many great man markers.
Most teams seem to have followed the getting Nos behind the ball tactic so the days of leaving forwards isolated is long gone in big games I think.

I think PJ should make the starting team but not sure about the rest.
I would still not be surprised if Mickey brought back Ricey and Block into the half back line again later for their experience and probably Carlin at corner back. It's an interesting back 12 to choose from and that's leaving out McNabb

McCrory               Ricey
Clarke                 Justy
PJ Quinn              Carlin
McCarron            Joey
P.Harte               Block
D.McCaul            Sean O'Neill

With Armagh getting their wings trimmed yesterday they'll be less confident now come championship time. It would certainly be nice to win the Div 2 title and gave this new look time a wee bit of confidence in themselves for the summer ahead.

I'm certainly a lot more positive now than I was back in January. Winning breeds confidence which usually breeds more winning. We've still plenty to work on but at least we're showing great promise both up front and at the back. 8-50 scored in 4 matches is great going no matter whether it is Div 2 or not. Derry and Kildare are not bad teams as we'll see later on this year no doubt.

[Redhand Santa]

As always we do appear to have plenty of options. I'm actually not convinced this team that didn't start wouldn't beat the team that lined out on Saturday night:
Devine
Carlin
Gormley
Ricey
Sean O'Neill
D Harte
Clarke
C Cavanagh
Cassidy
S Cavanagh
T McGuigan
Mattie Donnelly
R O'Neill
S O'Neill
Laverty

This Sundays could prove to be the toughest of the campaign so far so would be nice to get a win for a change in Galway.

[Croí na hÉireann]

No offence taken Fuzzman, I'd be fairly realistic as to our limitations at the moment and from the highlights I saw it didn't look pretty. The view from the stand offered more (as it always does) and if we had an inside forward line the game might have held your interest for a while longer anyway. Next time we'll keep it tight 

[Gabriel_Hurl]

looking forward to catching the game on TV tonight