Are Monaghan a dirty team or are Tyrone soft ?

[Bensars]

an average monaghan team without a decent free taker (they would have won at a cantor) hit tyrone a few slaps and look what happens. tyrone scrape over the line....

Nice try.

A bit like kerrys win over cork then.

Being from the kingdom you know well it done kerry no good when they tried a " few Slaps" in recent years.

[orangeman]

I can't speak about Hinphey but Walsh was an absolute disgrace in 2005 - he kicked him, spat at him, punched him - please let's not even think about that !

[thebandit]

Tyrone have it down to a fine art. If Monaghan built up a head of steam yesterday and got a few scores on the trot, a Tyrone man always lay down and held the kick out up after the score. No one was hurt at any stage yesterday but Tyrone always took their breaks at the right stage. Ref eventually caught on and told a Tyrone to get off the field if he wanted attention as he lay, very seriously hurt in his own square in the second half. Only for the grace of god did he survive to not need medical attention and was able to return to attion within seconds of the ref waving for the kick out to be taken without him involved in the action.

[Loup Bandit]

I can't speak about Hinphey but Walsh was an absolute disgrace in 2005 - he kicked him, spat at him, punched him - please let's not even think about that !

I am not condoning the supposed actions of Nicolas Walsh but im merely stating that this was only one of the few occasions that i seen cavanaghs threat being thwarted. Hinphey done a grand job in Healy park last year.

[orangeman]

The whole Derry team did a good job in Healy Park last year if I remember correctly ! Do you think you can beat Laois ? I think you will but complacency might be a wee problem - hopefully not and that will be another Ulster representative in the last 8 -

[Elias]

What I found particularly frustrating was the number of cynical fouls Monaghan were gulity of in the game, any chance they got to break up a Tyrone attack, they made sure and took it. Not dirty fouls, before I get berated, just enough of a pull or a shove to break the flow of a Tyrone attack.

The tactic was very effective in my view.

[orangeman]

Having reviewed the game, I don't think they were dirty - they were just up for the game - ok they were very cynical in the way they fouled and broke up attacks etc. but I don't think you could call them dirty as such  - I still think they have their work cut out for them against Donegal.

[Real Talk]

I think Lynchbuoy's analysis of the game was correct and I'd also say that the ref hadn't the steel to send a Monaghan man off in his own back yard.  For some years now Cavanagh, Dooher and Mulligan have 'engineered' frees for Tyrone and referees have still not caught on.  Kerry have some excellent players but have always successfully carried a few 'good dirty' ones like A O'Mahony, D O'She and Paul Galvin who rarely get a sustanable 'red' card.  But the reality is that is why they are successfull with the recent Galway team being a rare exception.

[Declan]

See we made the papers this morning:

An Irishman's Diary

Frank McNally

As I write this, a post-Ulster Final debate is raging on one of the internet's better GAA sites, under the heading: "Are Monaghan a dirty team or are Tyrone soft?"

Like the game itself, the debate is proving to be a tight affair, with the thesis that Tyrone players do go down a bit easily - and that this is a lamentable feature of the modern game - just ahead by two points (wind assisted).

But there's nothing new under the sun, and there is definitely nothing new in Gaelic football.

Here is Patrick Kavanagh, former goalkeeper for Inniskeen Grattans, describing a game from his heyday in the 1930s - probably against the hated local rivals, Donaghmoyne Fontenoys: "The team we were playing was a disgusting class of a team, who used every form of psychological warfare. For instance, when one of them was knocked down, he rolled on the ground and bawled like a bull a-gelding."

Not that the Grattans were strangers to cynical behaviour. Here is Kavanagh again, describing a useful tactic when a contest had swung decisively in favour of the opposition. "We never finished a game if towards the end we were a-batin'," he admits. "We always found an excuse to rise a row and get the field invaded."

Of course, a good lawyer might question the poet's credibility as a witness; for, just to prove there is nothing new, his GAA career was overshadowed by an illegal payments controversy. This even led to his sacking as club secretary and team captain. But then, the crime was compounded by the fact that he was also treasurer, so he was both the maker and recipient of the payments.

Here is a summary of his testimony, not that it saved him: "There was no means of checking up on my cash, which gave rise to a lot of ill-founded suspicion. I remember I kept the money in an attaché case under my bed. It is possible I visited it every so often for the price of a packet of cigarettes, but nothing serious." Kavanagh's brief memoir of his football career is in a book called A Poet's Country, edited by Antoinette Quinn. It carries the heading of "Gut yer man" - a then standard piece of advice given to GAA players by supporters during a game. And although he was well aware of the passions stirred by football, Kavanagh used the essay to explain why he hadn't written about it more often.

He concluded that, for all its drama, sport was too superficial to treat at any length. "The emotion is a momentary puff of gas, not an experience," he argued, calling James Joyce as a prosecution witness. The only sports event to feature in Ulysses - "that compendium of commonplace emotions and goings on" - is the Ascot Gold Cup, Kavanagh noted: "So sport can't have been very vital, for Joyce had a mind like a sponge." Wherever he is now, I hope the poet appreciated the joke on Sunday, when sport was vital enough to force the postponement of National Patrick Kavanagh Day, at least in Inniskeen.

Kavanagh Day is a recent addition to the calendar, inspired by the canal bank poems, particularly the line about "the tremendous silence of mid-July". Unfortunately for the organisers, this year's event clashed with a rare Ulster Final appearance by Monaghan. So the silence was indeed tremendous around the poet's home village on Sunday, because everybody was in Clones. The commemoration has now been rescheduled for August 5th, a day when - barring replays - there will be no big football matches on.

Whatever about the joke, Kavanagh would definitely have appreciated the psychological warfare in Clones, which extended on and off the field. It is normal for players to introduce themselves before the throw-in in such a way as to unsettle opponents. But at the North Monaghan venue, the mobile phone companies always get in on the act too, issuing welcome messages to supporters designed to put them off their game.

Thus it was that, after an absence of three years, Clones again resounded with that distinctive sound of thousands of mobile phones beeping to tell their owners that they were now in the UK but could access their messages just like at home.

The gamesman- ship was probably more deliberate on the field, it's true. But since the game is over, I'm not going to offer an opinion on whether players did go down too easily, lest any pro-Monaghan prejudice influence me. In fairness to Tyrone, it's possible that the law of gravity is just stronger in the Republic, or something.

The main thing is that the game was a fitting return home for the Ulster Final. There had been wild talk beforehand of Clones creating a carnival atmosphere to mark the occasion, with music and street theatre and God knows what. And although, in the event, the town pulled back from any such madness, the game more than compensated as a spectacle.

I'm not saying it was champagne football from start to finish. But by Ulster standards, it was a celebration of the human spirit, with gutting at a minimum.

When Tyrone led by eight points at one stage, a massacre looked likely. Then came the comeback, as Monaghan goal chances started appearing like the number 10 bus. All the gamesmanship was forgotten in those frenetic closing minutes. Indeed, such was the excitement among the home supporters, it somehow never occurred to any of us to invade the pitch and get the game called off.

[ONeill]

Oh holy Jaysus. Some Journo has used a wind-up thread as a source for his article. Must start one - 'I saw Bellew and McNulty shopping for knickers in Marks and Spencers' and see what happens.....

[orangeman]

Very good O'Neill - very funny indeed ! Now there's a good thread - Francie etc

[Loup Bandit]

The whole Derry team did a good job in Healy Park last year if I remember correctly ! Do you think you can beat Laois ? I think you will but complacency might be a wee problem - hopefully not and that will be another Ulster representative in the last 8 -

Aye the team played well last year Orangeman, i was just highlighting Hinphey's contribution because he was given the unenviable task of tracking Cavanagh but he doen very well. Anyway thats in the past...
On the laois game, it will be a very tough one. They are a sharp running side, they league game at celtic park this year was a great game that ended in a draw so im expecting another close affair.
I know what your saying about complacency but as long as we keep the thing in context (beating an armagh side on the slide and Mayo just fell apart in the second half)

For God and Ulster! 

[orangeman]

I think Derry's weakness ( if you can call it that ) is that they can really lift themselves for the big teams and can fall in a heap against so called lesser opposition - why do you think that it is ?

[Loup Bandit]

I think Derry's weakness ( if you can call it that ) is that they can really lift themselves for the big teams and can fall in a heap against so called lesser opposition - why do you think that it is ?

Good question.  uummm sometimes i think you can focus more when your facing whats perceived to be bigger oppositon. Being the under-dog certainly has its advantages. You know you have it all to do if you are to win and progress, whereas whilst being favourites like derry were against Monaghan perhaps a little bit of complacency crept into the heads of the players. Some players that is, depends on the individual i guess. This is where good management comes in IMHO. Plus knowing in the back of your head you will get a nother bite at the cherry maybe had a bearing too.
This same happens down to club level as well.

What you reckon??

[GrandMasterFlash]

Sure wasn't a Monaghan player lying prostrate on the ground even before the ball was thrown in. When the ref didn't stop the thing he soon got to his feet.....

Believe that was Freeman who fell over easier than most the whole game.  When he did wise up and play he was quite effective.

The worst action is when someone goes down and then lies holding his face to try and have the opposition booked/sent off.  Freeman was at this and Jordan did it when he was winded when a Monaghan player and lay on the ground clutching his face!

I'm not trying to take away from Tyrone's win and am just telling the incident how I seen it. It happened to Dessie Moen. Kevin Hughes headbutted him yards in front of the umpires of whom neither had the b&lls to raise their hand! A big decision to make admittedly but Hub would have been lookin at 3 months if it had of been reported! I was sitting in the lower Gerry Arthur on the 20 yard line, i.e it was well within my view!