By Kieran Rooney
[caption id="attachment_69469" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Derry's Neill Forester and Brian McCallion try to stop Tyrone's Peter Hughes."]
TYRONE’S form in the National Football League is sure to be viewed with considerable interest following a successful McKenna Cup campaign which saw them defeat Derry by 1-14 to 2-8 in last weekend’s final at the Athletic Grounds in Armagh.
The match drew a crowd that included none other than Northern Ireland’s First Minister Peter Robinson. It also featured a major turning point with the dismissal of Derry midfielder James Conway in the 16th minute.
Predictably, the often outspoken Derry boss John Brennan had a firm view on the red card. “I wonder how a man 100 meters away had better vision than the other linesman who was approximately five meters away. We had a comfortable lead at that stage” Brennan fumed.
Indeed, Derry did establish an early 1-4 to 0-1 lead but fell away badly following the sending off of Conway. So much so that Tyrone had opened up a 1-14 to 1-7 advantage before a late point and a penalty put some more respectability on the scoreline for Derry.
Sensibly, Tyrone boss Mickey Harte wasn’t about to get carried away. At the same time, he is undoubtedly pleased with his side’s lead in to their Division Two National League campaign.
“We will go into the league with a certain amount of confidence.” Harte admitted. “We badly want to get back into Division One.
“If you are in Division Two, you are not playing the top eight teams in the country regularly. And that’s hardly ideal,” he commented.
More, much more, should be know about the ability of this Tyrone outfit after they face the in-form Kildare in their opening National Football League game this weekend. Unfortunately, Kildare’s O’Byrne Cup final against DCU (Dublin City University) had to be postponed because of a waterlogged pitch at Newbridge on Sunday.
But they have already shown with their victory over Dublin how sharp they are. It should be quite a clash between two teams who understandably feel that their rightful place is in the top division.
One area that Harte believes Tyrone have to improve on is their finishing. They had lots of chances, following the dismissal of Conway, and their manager felt they should have made much better use of them.
As it was, a goal from Owen Mulligan brought them level on 1-5 each at the interval. Tyrone subsequently took complete command in the second half, Mattie Donnelly (0-3) and Mickey Murphy (0-2) helping them establish a seven point advantage.
It was only then that Derry managed a late point from Sean Leo McGoldrick and a penalty, converted by Cailean O’Boyle.
Cork, like Tyrone, will start their National League campaign in a reasonable frame of mind following a comfortable 0-13 to 0-6 McGrath Cup final success over Tipperary in Clonmel.
The defending champions will open their Division One campaign, away to Armagh this weekend.
But they do have major injury concerns with Daniel Goulding and Ciaran Sheehan definitely out and quite a few others nursing problems which make them doubtful. That said, Cork are always going to be very competitive.
They proved as much against Tipperary with Paul Kerrigan (0-4) and Fintan Goold (0-3) contributing seven points between them. Manager Conor Counihan must also have been impressed by the efforts of second choice goalkeeper Ken O’Halloran who denied Tipperary on a number of occasions.
The other interesting foootballing match of note saw Laois record a decisive 1-15 to 1-6 win over Wexford in the O’Byrne Shield final. Given that they are in with the big boys in Division One of the National League this year, it was essential that Laois provided themselves with some encouragement.
On the hurling front, Dublin’s first competitive appearance ended in defeat when they went down by 2-14 to 1-14 to Laois in the quarter-final of the Walsh Cup. The match was played in dreadful conditions at O’Moore Park.
Dublin had the excuse that they were badly under-strength but Laois had reason to feel pleased with their victory. They will now face Galway in this weekend’s semi-finals.
Galway’s Walsh Cup quarter-final encounter with UCD had to be moved to the all-weather pitch at Belfield because of the atrocious weather conditions.
Not that it bothered them as they demolished the students by 6-25 to 1-8. Joe Canning scored 1-6 before he was withdrawn at half time.
Elsewhere, an unrecognizable Kilkenny outfit edged out NUI Galway 0-13 to 0-12 in another of the Walsh Cup quarter-finals at Freshford. It was a Kilkenny team made up of what was effectively a senior development squad.
In the first round of the Waterford Crystal Cup, new Clare manager Davy Fitzgerald saw his team outclass Waterford IT by 3-25 to 0-5, while Offaly had a 2-18 to 1-15 success over Wexford in the Walsh Shield semi-final at Wexford Park.
Dave Kearney,
Zebo impress
IRELAND rugby manager Declan Kidney continued his preparations for the start of the Six Nations Championship by watching the Irish Wolfhounds lose 23-17 to the England Saxons at Exeter on Saturday.
In reality, this is England B team against Ireland’s equivalent, although neither country was quite fielding their second best team. But the game does provide Kidney with an important opportunity to assess up and coming talent. Unfortunately, from the Wolfhounds point of view, they simply didn’t get enough possession to secure a victory.
Effectively, England’s dominance in the scrum set up their victory. Even so, Kidney must have been encouraged by the fact that Ireland managed to outscore them by three tries to two.
Those tries came from wings Dave Kearney and Simon Zebo and substitute scrum-half Tomas O’Leary. Zebo, the scorer of a hat-trick of tries for Munster the previous weekend, was only brought into the side as a replacement for the injured Luke Fitzgerald.
Once again, the promising 21 year-old was impressive with ball in hand, taking his late try well. But it could be argued that the Leinster wing Kearney, a brother of international full-back Rob, had the better game.
Either way, Kidney is not exactly short of wings to choose from with Tommy Bowe and Andrew Trimble likely to get the spots against Wales, and Keith Earls possibly filling the injured Brian O’Driscoll’s outside centre position.
O’Leary, however, just might have given the Irish coach something to think about in terms of the second choice behind Conor Murray. At the moment, Eoin Reddan fills that spot but O’Leary definite signs of a return to bis best form at Exeter, scoring a very well taken try.
Given that they were under considerable pressure, Leinster flanker Rhys Ruddock did well in the pack. Overall, Kidney seemed quite contented, although, as usual, he wasn’t giving too much away.
He said: “There were some good individual performances, some of the units worked well. It’s a very different environment and it’s interesting to see how guys cope with it.”
The problem for Irish Wolfhounds coaches Eric Elwood and Anthony Foley is that the match against the England Saxons is the only game the Wolfhounds play all year.
“The lads would have liked to have played against Scotland or Italy but it’s not to be because of the amount of games in the RaboDirect Pro12 League. Maybe next year.” stressed Elwood.
The Wolfhounds fell 10-0 adrift in the first half, only to reduce the deficit to 10-5 at half-time with Kearney’s try after good work by Eoin O’Malley. Second half tries from O’Leary and Zebo, one of which was converted by replacement out-half Ian Madigan, kept the Irish Wolfhounds in touch but they could not overhaul their rivals.
GAA await ref’s
Report on fracas
THE GAA has begun an investigation into the brawl involving players and supporters which marred Sunday week’s All-Ireland Junior club football semi-final between Tyrone’s Derrytresk and Kerry’s Dromid Pearses at Portlaoise.
Amateur video footage shown on television did precious little for the image of the GAA. They are now going to look at Leitrim referee Francis Flynn’s report before deciding how their investigation should go.
Derrytresk won the match by 1-10 to 0-7. They were ahead by a point when the fighting broke out at halftime.
The Tyrone side will now go forward to face Clonbur from Galway in the final on Feb. 12 at Croke Park. Potentially, however, there could be some suspensions following the investigation.
Johnston is step
closer to Kildare
THE potential move of Cavan’s Seanie Johnston to play for Kildare has taken a further step following the lodging of a formal transfer request with the Cavan County Board.
Johnston has requested that he is allowed to move from Cavan Gaels to St Kevin’s, Staplestown in Kildare. Initially, Johnston has checked out the possibility of continuing to play his club football in Cavan while transferring his county allegiance to Kildare.
But that is not possible. So now the Kildare based Johnston is hoping that a change of clubs will resolve the matter.
In the meantime, Kildare manager Kieran McGeeney has stated that he would be pleased to be able to call on the services of Johnston. He said: “I’ve an open door policy. I’ve never stopped anyone who wants to play for Kildare.”
