Tyrone Club Football and Hurling

[orangeman]

Fianna men have yous got rid of your managment? Yous looking forward to the championship? How are yous going now?

Snappiered are you worried your man might be jumping ship 

Step forward the 2 Tony's - the time is now!

Not yet - there's a junior championship to be won ar an chnoc !

[snappiered]

Na was just interested in how last years beaten county finalists are going.

[young anail]

Hear the trainer (pat mc nabb) is gone. We need a result up in Loughmacrory tonight. The 2 Tony's wouldn't be the worst. Maybe even big Sid!
Anyone think that club football has got very serious and this pressure has reflected one managers getting pushed or resigning. Only thinking of ourselves, Donaghmore and Killyclogher who've had a change of management throughout the year...and championship not even played yet!!

[orangeman]

Hear the trainer (pat mc nabb) is gone. We need a result up in Loughmacrory tonight. The 2 Tony's wouldn't be the worst. Maybe even big Sid!
Anyone think that club football has got very serious and this pressure has reflected one managers getting pushed or resigning. Only thinking of ourselves, Donaghmore and Killyclogher who've had a change of management throughout the year...and championship not even played yet!!

If you don't get a result against Loughmacrory, you're in big trouble. This will be a match that you in theory should win.
But Lough are a dogged team who can spring a surprise or two.


Any predictions for the other matches this weekend ?

[loughshore lad]

Hear the trainer (pat mc nabb) is gone. We need a result up in Loughmacrory tonight. The 2 Tony's wouldn't be the worst. Maybe even big Sid!
Anyone think that club football has got very serious and this pressure has reflected one managers getting pushed or resigning. Only thinking of ourselves, Donaghmore and Killyclogher who've had a change of management throughout the year...and championship not even played yet!!

Think of all the "expenses" yous will save without a man coming from Trillick every night for training, is it the trainers fault the fianna are not quite as "hot" as perhaps too many of their players and followers thought     

[Aaron Boone]

Kiddo, please provide tonight's results forthwith.

[tyroneboi]

Well done to Killyman first point of the season I hear.

[young anail]

Coalisland beat Loughmacrory 2:10 to 9points. Good win for Omagh. Makes for an interesting game next week up in annagher. Both teams will be looking a big performance before their championship opener the following week

[time ticking away]

Good man kiddo. I dont get any e mails from Aiden Harkin

[orangeman]

Was Dromore and Kildress match postponed ?

[Zapatista]

Did you go to the celebrations last night Kiddo? How did it go?

[redcard]

Teamtalk U-14 FC Finals – Saturday 21st June 2008
Grade 1
Cookstown 2-8 Omagh 6-12

Teamtalk U-14 FL Semi Final – Saturday 21st June 2008

Grade 3
Ardboe 9-11 Owen Roe's 3-5

[KIDDO 4]

Still life in this Harte
Malachy Clerkin
Two All Irelands have earned the Tyrone manager the right to decide when he leaves his post

Under the cosh: Mickey Harte has worked with some of the Tyrone side for over a decade, and many fans feel it's time for a change Miles to go before anyone sleeps and all that but the possibility opens up ever more with each passing weekend that this will be the first year since 1998 that neither Tyrone nor Armagh win the Ulster championship. After a decade-long bout of last-man-standing between the pair that at times held a grim fascination for all in the province, there's every chance now that it might be over. Not for good, naturally, just for now.




And actually, whether or not Armagh manage to hang on in there and lift the Anglo Celt Cup in Clones five weeks from today, the Ulster championship is a changed place these days. Truth is, neither they nor Tyrone keep the other counties awake at night any more. Maybe this fact, as much as any other, goes some way to explaining the extraordinary amount of naked fury directed at Mickey Harte in Tyrone since last Saturday night's extra-time defeat to Down.




Tyrone supporters have always been hard ones to please but keeping their sense of entitlement well-nourished will generally do the trick. Take that away, though, remind him that there was a time when Tyrone were no more a force to be reckoned with than most of their neighbours (and that that time will come again) and chances are you should take cover. Harte could certainly have done with a flak jacket this week.




It got so bad during the week that both Joe Kernan and Peter Canavan were moved to come out in support of the man who has overseen Tyrone's only two All Ireland titles. Kernan cut right to the marrow on Tuesday. "Some Tyrone supporters have already started to show their discontent," he said, "but they are not the ones who have put their lives on hold these last six or so years, made massive sacrifices, trained four nights a week and put their bodies on the line every Sunday. Tyrone supporters should be thankful for the enjoyment the players and management have given them and so they could boast and brag about the great team they had." Ouch.




Not that anyone in Tyrone was likely to pass any remarks on what Kernan had to say for himself, of course. But Canavan's is still a voice that carries an echo around the county and he was out the next day standing up for his former manager. "The Tyrone supporters should realise how well the team played and not jump on the bandwagon," he said. "And the Tyrone players themselves realise the best chance they have of winning anything is with Mickey Harte as manager."




Last Saturday night in Newry threw up the best game of the championship so far in any province and in either code. Over two games and 20 minutes of extra time, Tyrone lost by one point out of an aggregate total of 5-56. It was only the second replay Harte has lost in his six years in charge and it was on enemy soil against a quick and deadly Down side that Ross Carr and DJ Kane have pointed arrow-straight in the direction of the county's first Ulster title in 14 years. And still Harte finds himself in stocks.




None of the 2005 full-forward line of Canavan, Stephen O'Neill or Owen Mulligan was available to him so he pressed Seán Cavanagh into service at full-forward, forcing him to use Conor Gormley and Joe McMahon in centrefield. The architect of that 2005 final win Brian McGuigan still isn't match-fit after two years out and didn't put a boot on the pitch in Newry. Harte's first-choice free-taker Colm Cavanagh went off injured after half an hour and then his replacement Kevin Hughes only lasted 16 minutes before having to go off injured himself. With all this going on, Tyrone still scored 17 points in normal time and another four in extra time. And yet the calls for Harte's resignation still ring out, some of the more hysterical of them insisting that he go before the qualifiers even.




Maybe he'll hang it up at the end of the year and maybe he won't but to expect any great change in Tyrone's fortunes without a return to form and fitness of McGuigan, Mulligan, Enda McGinley and Raymond Mulgrew is to border on the wilfully ignorant. Martin Penrose and Colm McCullagh have been handy, darting corner-forwards for a while now but without a proper full-forward to dart around they'll buzz more than they sting. Cavanagh can't be a long-term option there and the fact that Harte was forced to throw him into the number 14 jersey lays out perfectly how short his options are. In a million years, could you imagine Ciaran Whelan or Darragh Ó Sé having to put in a shift there?




That's how bare the Tyrone cupboard is though. It's what happens when you lose each member of an All Star full-forward line in the space of three years. Dan Gordon lorded the midfield at times last Saturday night because neither Gormley nor McMahon is a natural in there but without McGinley and needing Cavanagh elsewhere, Harte simply ran out of bodies.




Down were well entitled to fancy themselves against Tyrone last weekend and yet the way Harte's taken it in the neck since then, you'd swear it was London that beat them. Carr and Kane have put together as quick and mobile a team as there is around and in Gordon and Ambrose Rodgers they have two of the best kick-out winners in Ulster to hand. They also found 11 points last Saturday from their half-back line, albeit that nine of them were from placed balls.




They counter-attack at breakneck speed and don't always rely on Benny Coulter to dig them out of trouble any more, even if that's precisely what he did with his goal in extra-time last Saturday. And young Paul McComiskey is unquestionably one of the province's most dangerous substitutes. Sometimes the other team is just better. And even when they aren't, you sometimes still lose.




Harte is nobody's idea of a fool and never has been. Those who warn against the perils of same-voice syndrome and point out that there are players in his dressing room who've been listening to him for over a decade now at various levels ignore that the key to his management has always been his willingness to listen to them. When he thinks they've had enough of him, he'll walk.




If nothing else, though, two All Irelands should surely buy him the opportunity to make that decision for himself.




mclerkin@tribune.ie

[orangeman]

Great piece in the Tribune which gives you in a nutshell where Tyrone's problems are - a dearth of talent to replace the irreplaceable.


Maybe he'll hang it up at the end of the year and maybe he won't but to expect any great change in Tyrone's fortunes without a return to form and fitness of McGuigan, Mulligan, Enda McGinley and Raymond Mulgrew is to border on the wilfully ignorant. Martin Penrose and Colm McCullagh have been handy, darting corner-forwards for a while now but without a proper full-forward to dart around they'll buzz more than they sting. Cavanagh can't be a long-term option there and the fact that Harte was forced to throw him into the number 14 jersey lays out perfectly how short his options are. In a million years, could you imagine Ciaran Whelan or Darragh Ó Sé having to put in a shift there?




That's how bare the Tyrone cupboard is though. It's what happens when you lose each member of an All Star full-forward line in the space of three years. Dan Gordon lorded the midfield at times last Saturday night because neither Gormley nor McMahon is a natural in there but without McGinley and needing Cavanagh elsewhere, Harte simply ran out of bodies.

[orangeman]

Big win for Eglish in Galbally !