Meath vs. Tyrone

[muppet]

I'll break with the whinging and say I really enjoyed that match. Good championship fare which could have gone either way but the better team did just about enough.

Some great new players like Wallace, Newman & McCurry. Some goals, some saves, some great points (Bray!), some awful misses, some reputations redeemed and of course a few hard hits. Ref swung one way then the other but fair overall I felt.

Let's have more of that!

[emmetryan]

Hi guys,

Tactical analysis of yesterday's win for Tyrone over Meath now up.
http://action81.com/blog/?p=7483

Emmet

[Jinxy]

I'll break with the whinging and say I really enjoyed that match. Good championship fare which could have gone either way but the better team did just about enough.

Some great new players like Wallace, Newman & McCurry. Some goals, some saves, some great points (Bray!), some awful misses, some reputations redeemed and of course a few hard hits. Ref swung one way then the other but fair overall I felt.

Let's have more of that!

Who's whinging?!

[Fear ón Srath Bán]

Was a pleasure to meet a happy, cheery, smiley Seán Boylan after the game last night. Sláinte Seán.

[thejuice]

Didn't get to see it as I found myself in a place without an Irish pub, phone signal or Wifi, so I didn't find out till Sunday morning how it ended.

While its great to see young Wallace getting his first goal by exploiting his blistering pace, to have only put 9 points on the board is a bit disappointing.

Hope to see a bit of it tonight online.

Going forward it will be interesting to see what squad Mick will have next year. Do lads like David Bray or Shane O'Rourke get back in the squad? How long do Joe and Stephen Bray have left? Is there no way back for the likes of Cian Ward? Do we try something different to get more mobility into midfield?

[Jinxy]

A fit Shane O'Rourke would solve our centre forward problem.

[thejuice]

Alan Forde is another young lad who did alright last year but no sign of him this year.

[Fuzzman]

I watched the 1st half again last night and Meath really did struggle to get scores from play. Wallace was excellent any time he got it and he was being tracked by McKenna for the goal. He looked like he was going outside McKenna to receive the pass but then cut inside and that got him ahead of his man and he had a straight run through then. He finished it well.

Meath's fullback was impressive all day and give Stevie another tough day at the office. Saying that though there were several times Meath had 4 men back marking 2 Tyrone forwards. For the first 15 mins we really struggled to create shooting chances but we did well to score 17 times though we also had a lot of wides. It's good to be creating those chances and Croke park suits us more for this I think. I thought McCurry was well up for it and looked lively and accurate from frees. That would have been a great point had he sealed it from the tight low pass from Stevie that time.

I thought at the game Petey had another disappointing game but having watched the 1st half again he probably did better than I thought. He certainly seems to be lacking in his own belief and having kicked a bad wide he then seemed slow to shoot for fear of missing. I think he feels the pressure and so its affecting his game.

It was great to see big Sean back to his glory days levels. He really seemed up for the game and was working his ass off to make things come off. He kicks the ball so cleanly that when he lines one up from 40/50 yards on the left wing, you kinda expect him to score now.
Am glad we're not missing Morgan too much for the frees but I was getting frustrated with how easy Meath could use the short kickout for a while and get easy scores whereas we had to kick it long into the middle.
Cassidy is very good and bursting through the middle sometimes when you think nothing is really on.

Looking forward now to Sat when Monaghan pitch their wits against us again. Hard to believe it was 8 years ago that we beat them in Croker.

[Jinxy]

I think Brolly made a fair point about deploying Harnan as a sweeper.
Maybe it wasn't all that necessary.
We probably needed that extra body around the midfield diamond a lot more than we needed it in the FB line.

[Fuzzman]

Yeah but as McStay replied back, as soon as ye take out that sweeper then the Tyrone players out the field will see Stevie is 1 on 1 now and so they'll start hitting him with more ball.
I would imagine Monaghan will have at least 1 if not 2 extra men around Stevie on Sat.

[Sea The Stars]

Tyrone the better team. They deserved the win. I thought Meath were flattered to be as close as they were at the end. The goals kept them in the game.

I do agree though the cynical fouling at the end was not nice to see. Also Stephen O'Neill got three very soft frees out of Kevin Reilly and Darren McCurry got one too. I wouldn't use this as an excuse for Meath but it does frustrate me because other referees in other games are happy to let the like of this go.

As for Meath - good year. Improvement in performance and consistency. Didn't beat a big name though. Fermanagh, Wicklow, Antrim, Sligo, Roscommon and Wexford the only teams we beat.

[Sea The Stars]

Shane O'Rourke is over-rated (yeah good footballer but the way some Meath supporters go on about him !!). He's played two and a bit seasons and has been injured for around four and a half. He looked good when coming along first in 2007, got injured in the League in 2008 or 2009, and never really got back fully fit until 2010 where he was only okay. In 2011, I didn't think he was good. Hope he gets back fit and injury free, nobody deserves the run of injuries he's had, but think it's optimistic to expect him to do a whole lot especially after all the setbacks he's had.

David Bray another man who's spent a lot of time battling injuries. The second cruciate set him back a long, long way. He can barely get in the O'Mahony's team, so don't know about playing for Meath again.

Alan Forde - I think Banty was a massive fan but I don't know if other managers are. Very fast and very strong but lacking an end product I felt last year. Still young and open to improvement.

[nrico2006]

Peter Harte comes in for a lot of criticism, but watching  him the other day it was obvious that he is one of the few sources of ball into SON that we have.  Harte hit a few kick passes into forwards from forty/50 yards out, and thats what more of our defenders need to do when given the chance.  The other thing I thought was obvious was the ease at which Meath players were able to collect short kick-outs.  I thought it was a given in the modern game that all forwards are tuned in for thr short kick-out as soon as the ball goes wide or for a score.  Its the easist way for a team to gain possession, they can take the kick-out and dander up the field and as we know its very difficult to get the ball back.  Surely all our forwards should be stuck to their markers like glue for the kick-outs, little things like this make a huge difference.  I was also surprised at the speed and power displayed by Cassidy when bursting through the Meath defence, hopefully see a lot more of that this week.  Still think our attack is too blunt, why can;t we have a corner forward on the pitch who gets the ball and tries to skin his man.  We are creating very few goals chances and have scored a paltry amount of goals in recent years.

[ONeill]

Same as Fuzz - if Peter ironed out those silly errors of passing to the opposition at speed (only 2-3 times a game) he's as good as anyone out there. He found O'NEILL nearly every time.  I thought he was close to his best form.

[Jinxy]

Shane O'Rourke is over-rated (yeah good footballer but the way some Meath supporters go on about him !!). He's played two and a bit seasons and has been injured for around four and a half. He looked good when coming along first in 2007, got injured in the League in 2008 or 2009, and never really got back fully fit until 2010 where he was only okay. In 2011, I didn't think he was good. Hope he gets back fit and injury free, nobody deserves the run of injuries he's had, but think it's optimistic to expect him to do a whole lot especially after all the setbacks he's had.

David Bray another man who's spent a lot of time battling injuries. The second cruciate set him back a long, long way. He can barely get in the O'Mahony's team, so don't know about playing for Meath again.

Alan Forde - I think Banty was a massive fan but I don't know if other managers are. Very fast and very strong but lacking an end product I felt last year. Still young and open to improvement.

He's not.
Footballers with his skill and physical ability are like hens teeth in the county.
He has been crucified with chronic injury so I think you're being a bit unfair to him.
He'd be a kick-out option and a potent attacking threat.