Match Thread: Monaghan v Tyrone, Saturday 4pm *MOD WARNING #178*

J Cheever Loophole wrote: »

Looking back on the game, I thought Tyrone were by some distance the better team on the field. They were well worth their victory. There was an incisiveness to their play that allowed them to penetrate the Monaghan defence with much more success than Donegal enjoyed in Clones. Monaghan simply laboured at the other end of the field. They are too reliant on the genius of McManus, although he was still able to light up the match with occasional glimpses of greatness.

Trying to put the match and the result into perspective, my guess would be that what happened on Saturday night gives a true reflection on where Donegal and Monaghan are on the national stage, and both would have to be considered some way off the top. Where it puts Tyrone is more difficult to gauge, and it is likely that their joust with Kerry will really show us where they are. They are a team with pace and can win a lot of frees with their running at defences. They had an excellent kick out strategy in place that allowed Morgan to find his man around the wing half back positions. However they will struggle in the air against that Kerry midfield and I'd guess that Kerry will push up on their kick-outs to ensure that Morgan's kickouts head out around the middle. However I really expect Tyrone to give Kerry their fill of it.

As for the fall-out from the game, there was clearly no love lost between the neighbours, and that was reflected in a lot of what happened. As a neighbour of Monaghan myself, I have seen their own teams over the years employ the dark arts, and with the ship going down in injury time, there were challenges being made that brought reminders to me of household Monaghan names of the seventies and eighties.

And yet it is Tyrone who appear to be copping all (or the majority of) the blame. Why is that? All teams are cynical to some degree or another. I've seen none worse this year than Galway at the Athletic Grounds, who wound down the clock with a series of rugby tackles that saw two black cards in as many minutes.

For me, there is something about Tyrone's cynicism that is absolutely brazen. There is no effort to disguise it - it is there for all to see and it is completely unapologetic - it has the air of a team thumbing their nose at the rest of the GAA world. I recall saying the same after 'that' foul by Sean Cavanagh on Conor McManus in 2013. Yes, any player would have done something similar in the same position, but Cavanagh had spent the closing minutes of the previous game against Meath attempting to rugby tackle anything that moved, some eighty yards from the Tyrone goal, as they clung to a narrow lead.

Mickey Harte's first year in charge was 2003, when they won the All Ireland Final. That Summer was marked by much of what we saw on Saturday night - buying cheap frees and opponents being sent off for in dubious circumstances as Tyrone players fell dramatically clutching their faces. Greg McCartan and Diarmaid Marsden are examples.

My hope would be that referees get wise to this. Tyrone are definitely in the spotlight as we go forward and the referee the next day out is bound to have that on his mind as Sean Cavanagh hits the deck. As Colm O'Rourke said on TSG, it's possible that in the future Tyrone might be denied legitimate frees because of the reputation of the player fouled. I wonder would Greg McCartan or Diarmaid Marsden have a quiet smirk at the irony of that?

J Cheever Loophole wrote: »

Equally, if a forward is looking for a free, then it doesn't take much to take them down.

J Cheever Loophole wrote: »

It is if you dive.

J Cheever Loophole wrote: »

Well agree to disagree. We could both analyse the one piece of footage and see two separate explanations. I believe that Tyrone are brilliant at buying frees - they go down very easily for my liking when they could well stay on their feet.

I get a sense from what you said earlier that you see this as expertly taking advantage of the conditions that present themselves - I just feel it is cheating.