BIGMAC
Fanatical Member
not dead only sleeping
Posts: 1,247
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Post by BIGMAC on Oct 10, 2005 11:15:42 GMT
i think you guys are losing prespective a slight bit,its not that the likes of armagh and tyrone are ahead of you its just we've caught up and are now very much on power with you.the teams imo are very equal and when you factor this in its allways goin to be the kick of a ball that decides the game.your problem still lies with the lack of a cerdible opposition on the run in to the championship,if you where in ulster do you think you would progress as often as you do? i think not.you lot may not like the northern style but it deffo hones a team and when you have to dig deep for allmost every opponent it builds a mental strenght and belief in your abilities that stands by you when you have to dig deep and ask questions of yourself.after saying all that i would'nt be surprised if kerry won the next 3 aif's, as i say theres nothing between them
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Post by lostinmayo on Oct 10, 2005 11:15:44 GMT
dat's the problem, he didn't mark Gormley, he was allowed to stand in front of Gooch and pick up the easy ball, Dos played behind our half back line for most of the game, Jack should have told him to move up to the 40, it doesn't matter anyway, i was just making a simple point, but u just like to pick up on stupid things
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Post by FatTom on Oct 10, 2005 11:40:10 GMT
You said he was centre forward on team sheet only - he wasn't he was number 14.
He played centre forward for most of the game and roamed. I get ur point in this respect, I didn't see what you were getting at at first.
Declan Sull did play centre forward he just didn't stay there
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Post by kerryman on Oct 12, 2005 10:31:45 GMT
I finally got around to watching the match on tape last night - its hard to take in whats going on when you're at the pitch. The thing that really stoof out is that a Tyrone guy under pressure from a few Kerry players generally managed to pass the ball to one of his own. Under similar pressure, the Kerry guys seemed more panicky and lost the world of possession.
..That and the fact that we had no half forward line in the right position. We should've dropped in Donaghy (since Crowley wasn't available) for Moynihan and got him to stick on the front 40 as a link man in the second half.
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Post by kerrygold on Oct 12, 2005 10:54:05 GMT
well said kerryman,my exact sentiments,id love to see moynihan on the forty yard line for the league,i think he could be very effective there.the lack of a half forward line killed us the last day,not even m fitz could score 80 or 90 yards out.we need to get back to six attaching forwards.we also need to develope a strong fullforward line to work with gooch.I feel brosnan would be ideal for this role,he has everything to make a class fullforward.my six forwards for the league would be 10. seamus moynihan 11. darren o sullivan 12. brian sheehan. 13. colm cooper 14. eoin brosnan 15. mike frank russell.
Players like dec sull,p galvin,ect.could be rotated in and out depending.any opinions.
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Post by buck02 on Oct 12, 2005 11:15:06 GMT
I think the final proved that we need to have at least one free scoring half forward - Moyno, Darren Sullivan & Sheehan would not provide this.
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Post by buck02 on Oct 12, 2005 11:18:03 GMT
..That and the fact that we had no half forward line in the right position. We should've dropped in Donaghy (since Crowley wasn't available) for Moynihan and got him to stick on the front 40 as a link man in the second half. Could you elaberate on this Kerryman, are you suggesting that Star should have been brought in as a link man between midfield and the full forward line??
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tombo
Full Member
Posts: 87
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Post by tombo on Oct 12, 2005 12:38:45 GMT
agree...if the lads (as they were) were insisting in lamping high balls in all day which clearly didnt work bar the first 10/15 mins then I agree Donaghy should have been brought in for the last 15/20 mins at full forward. It was deperation at that stage, as the high ball that was going in was bread and butter to the Tyrone fullback line. The few balls we did win up front were a few low balls that Gooch got on teh end of. Even he wasnt able to win the high ball. Not blaming him by the way for that because without him we would of been detroyed pretty much like alot of days.....completely over reliant (but thats for another day)........
Oh to have a younger Johnny Crowley back!!!
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Post by the1theyalllove on Oct 12, 2005 12:42:47 GMT
Matched the video at the wkend...we were doing ok up to Canavans goal, the worst possible time to concede just b4 HT. where oh where was Mike Mac and Tom Sullivan?? thats how the tables turned and the boys never recovered from that and tyrone as they do best built on it.
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tombo
Full Member
Posts: 87
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Post by tombo on Oct 12, 2005 12:48:35 GMT
ya......unbeleivable. Kind of reminds me of '78 when the whole Dub fullback line(Robbie Kelleher was up on his own half forward line!) were attacking Kerry only to be cought on the counet with Johnny Egan's (or was it Mikey who got teh fisted goal)... The words "priority to minding your own patch" spring to mind....however good bith Mike Mac and Tom Sullivan are on the ball going forward
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Post by kerryman on Oct 13, 2005 12:26:52 GMT
I wasn't saying put Moynihan on the 40. As Buck said, I was saying take him off at half time - our half back line was a full house - what we needed was someone big on the half foward line (Donaghy) to win ball and pass it low and quick to Brosnan or Gooch. That sector of the pich (forward 40) was empty most of the time and was a major issue.
I don't think Moynihan is the man to half half forward against Tyrone.
Watching Donaghy on Saturday, he is a very good ball winner just by sheer height.
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Post by buck02 on Oct 13, 2005 12:37:43 GMT
He may be a good man to win a ball over his head (although from what I've seen wont do it if theres 2 players going up with him) but I cant agree with Kerrymans assesment that he'd be the man to play ball into Gooch or Brosnan. His ability on the ball (most notably intelligent passing) is his major weakness. If he was to be brought on in the final 5 or 10 minutes against Tyrone, I feel he should have been thrown in full foward where he may have caused a bit of panic (ifs and buts!).
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Post by FatTom on Oct 14, 2005 10:14:12 GMT
Donnaghy should have been lobbed in full forward if anything but Tyrone would have crowded it.
i thought we should have brought on Sheahan for Cinneide early and left Gooch isolated inside like against cork.
with more space he'd have cleaned up
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falveyb2k
Fanatical Member
"The way this man played today, if there was a flood he'd walk on water. Jack O Shea"
Posts: 1,920
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Post by falveyb2k on Oct 15, 2005 0:09:28 GMT
Yeah but they had Gormley as a sweeper so it couldn't have worked. If we had forced Gormley to follow one of our forwards then I think we would have done it but c'est la vie.
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ballintoy
Full Member
mac uilin clg 1907-2006"Na Gleannta Glas d'Aontriom, An baile spiord?lta d'iom?na?ocht."
Posts: 62
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Post by ballintoy on Oct 15, 2005 18:11:00 GMT
McGirr’s Legacy Lives On © Copyright The Sunday Tribune Malachy Clerkin August 24th 2003 “I think it has been a real basis for the character of these lads that are now in the senior team. They’ve grown together. They did a lot of growing in a short space of time. And although it’s human nature that people move on and get on with their own lives long after something happens, I think there’s a lasting bond there. It’s a hidden thing that nobody really talks about but certainly a number of the players are aware of it. There was an unwritten pact to say, ‘Let’s go forward from here and do the best we can. And maybe, just maybe out there, there’s a Paul McGirr factor without anybody making a deal of it.’” Tyrone manager, Mickey Harte. THE traffic was a mess in Omagh that day, so bad that instead of getting the team bus to take them from lunch in Molly Sweeney’s to Healy Park, the Tyrone minor team decided they’d be just as quick walking. Besides, it was no harm strolling through town as a group, red and white kit-bags slung over their shoulders, matching tracksuits letting the world know who they were. The town was black with people, each and every one there to see them and the senior team play Armagh. Walking the walk added to the occasion. They knew their opponents well. Cormac McAnallen was at St Patrick’s College in Armagh and Fr Gerard McAleer, joint-manager alongside Mickey Harte, was about to enter his final year teaching at the same school. Earlier that year, Fr McAleer had been in charge of the St Pat’s team that had been beaten in the final of the McRory Cup by St Patrick’s Dungannon. The priest reckons that of the 30 boys who took the pitch in Omagh on 15 June 1997, he’d coached at least three-quarters of them at one stage or another. It turned out to be a disjointed, patternless dog of a game. Tyrone weren’t the fluid attacking outfit they’d been billed as and had it not been for three beautiful second-half points from Kevin Hughes, their season would probably have been over before it had really begun. Steven McDonnell was lobbing over points from all angles for Armagh but was getting very little help. In the end, Tyrone’s greater physical presence just about told. They won by 1-10 to 0-9, their goal coming after only 10 minutes when wing-forward Paul McGirr dived in front of Armagh goalkeeper Willie McSorley trying to get to a loose ball. The pair collided and although he got there momentarily ahead of McSorley, McGirr didn’t rise to celebrate after the ball dribbled into the net. The Tyrone team doctor, Seamus Cassidy, attended to him on the pitch before calling for a stretcher. He was taken to Tyrone County Hospital. The word was that he’d cracked a few ribs. Required Reading 22 After watching the seniors grab a lucky win in the second match, the rest of the players walked back to Molly Sweeney’s for their victory meal. The double done over Armagh, the sun high in the sky, it had been a fine day all round. Declan McCrossan was the team captain and he took it upon himself to hurry through his meal so he could go to the hospital to check in on McGirr. He, Stephen O’Neill and Aidie Ball always travelled together so the three of them headed off. There was no sense in everyone visiting at once – if Paul was going to be in for a few days, it’d probably be best to space out the visits. So most of the rest of the panel went home. “The traffic was really bad,” McCrossan recalls. “So we took a few of the back roads to get to the hospital. We got in and the first thing we saw was a priest talking to these two men. We didn’t know who they were or anything, we just wanted to find a nurse who could tell us where Paul was. But then we heard the priest say something like, ‘Well he was a young lad who died doing something he loved. Playing football for his county and enjoying himself.’ And we were just like, ‘Holy *, hang on a minute here. What’s after happening?’” What was after happening was that Paul’s liver had ruptured in the collision. One of the main arteries connected to the organ had torn away and the bleeding had become impossible to control. Paul died just after six o’clock, still dressed in his Tyrone gear. • • • Paul McGirr was the youngest of Francis and Rita McGirr’s six children. He’d started his footballing life with Errigal Ciaran in an under-12 team with the likes of Mark Harte and Cormac McGinley as teammates. Rita was a teacher in Garvaghy, Francis a farmer. He farmed bits and pieces of land around the area but when the chance came to move to bigger holding out in Dromore, he took it. Paul’s older brother Mickey continued playing for Errigal but Paul transferred to Dromore. He was a quick-witted kid, never short of a one-liner or a comeback if the dressing-room started humming with banter. One of the few on the panel who wouldn’t be underage again the following year, he was in the middle of a sports and leisure course at Fermanagh College. Beyond that, he was a Manchester United fan and had a photograph of himself and Alex Ferguson shaking hands at Old Trafford to prove it. He was outgoing and cheerful and if a party needed a little life and soul, he wouldn’t be long stepping up to the plate. On the field, he was a classy forward. Not especially stocky or well-built, more angular and lean. He was tall enough for a minor and carried himself around the pitch gracefully. His natural game was stylish and elegant but he wasn’t afraid to stick his head in among the flying boots if he had to. He lived to play for Tyrone. The night before the Armagh match, he bumped into Fr Tom Breen, the Dromore parish priest, the man who would say his funeral mass just four days later. Fr Breen told him to get home and get a good night’s sleep. “Oh, I won’t sleep,” said Paul. “I’m too excited to sleep.” • • • Required Reading 23 Mickey Harte arrived at the hospital just as McCrossan, O’Neill and Ball were coming out. They told him the news. He can remember the blood draining from his face and his first reaction being that of a father rather than a football manager. Paul had been wearing the number 12; his son Mark had been wearing 13. He has no idea how he’d have begun to cope in Francis and Rita McGirr’s position. The funeral was the following Wednesday. Peter Canavan brought one of Paul’s county jerseys up to the altar as an offertory gift. Various members of the panel carried the coffin a little of the way from St Dympna’s Church to St Davog’s graveyard. GAA people came from all over the country, including then president Joe McDonagh and former president Jack Boothman. The squad had been together on and off for most of the week, but they met up formally for the first time in the Glenavon House Hotel in Cookstown that Friday night. Harte and Fr McAleer brought in a psychologist, Dr Niall McCullough, to talk to the players. They broke up into small groups and talked the week’s events away. The tragedy had had a devastating effect on them, even though some of them would only have met Paul for the first time that April when the squad had started training in earnest. Souls were bared, shoulders cried on. A group of young footballers left their testosterone and their egos at the door and quietly grieved together. Fr McAleer says it was the most traumatic time in his life, worse than the sudden death of his mother four years ago or even the Omagh bombing. It was the randomness of it all that shook him, the fact that a boy he’d coached had collided with a boy he’d taught and one of them hadn’t got up again. Like he says, it wasn’t as if Paul had been out wrecking cars or messing around in a pool in Spain. He was a kid playing football. Kids don’t die playing football. They don’t. “It was a horrible, sad time for everybody,” says McAnallen. “But the bond that developed between us in those few days became really tight. Whenever we did eventually get around to thinking about the next match, players knew each other an awful lot better, for better or for worse. We came to trust each other and depend on each other.” An important part of that night was Dr Cassidy’s explanation of what had happened to their teammate. He assured them that Paul had died in a freak accident, that the chances of it happening had been minuscule, the chances of it happening again smaller still. Even so, Harte remembers that for a good while afterwards, his players treated injuries with much more apprehension than they had previously. That meeting set the antibodies to work and gradually, the wounds started to heal. When they met for training the following Monday, they got straight down to business. They had done their grieving, they had cried their tears. Now it was time to play football again. Harte and Fr McAleer were careful not to make the rest of their season a crusade for the memory of Paul McGirr. It would have been cheap emotional blackmail, nothing more. Instead, it was decided to retire the number 12 jersey for the rest of the year. On the morning of the next game, against Monaghan in Clones, McCrossan received a letter from Rita McGirr wishing him and the team all the best and thanking them for their support. They walked slowly out onto St Tiarnach’s Park that day in single file, boys carrying grief like Required Reading 24 men. Still, life went on. They beat Monaghan 4-14 to 3-7. The newspaper said they suffered from some defensive lapses. Many will be familiar with the rest. They built up momentum, took Antrim in the Ulster final and got past Kerry after an epic replay in the All Ireland semi-final. Laois caught them in the headlights in the final, but the majority returned the following year to take Tyrone’s first All Ireland minor title since 1973. Victory was sweet that day, but sweeter still was the under-21 title they lifted in 2000. This was the team Paul McGirr played on taking care of business they left unfinished the first time around. As they lined up for the photo that day, McCrossan felt someone tap his shoulder. He turned around to see Francis McGirr standing there. They shared a lengthy hug. Tyrone took another All Ireland under-21 title the following year and started spilling almost en masse onto the senior panel. Eight of the squad named for the game against Armagh that day in 1997 will be in the dressing room for this afternoon’s semi-final against Kerry. Another four were on the panel but since the management had to name a squad of 24, they weren’t given jerseys on the day. Twelve players from one minor panel is quite a harvest and Harte has always acknowledged the part coping with Paul McGirr’s death played in the reaping. Fr McAleer believes strongly that the tragedy made them better people and taught them about character in times of crisis, character that brought them back from the brink against Kerry that year and against Down and Derry this. McAnallen says while his name is never mentioned, Paul’s legacy is forever there. “When you look at things now and you look at the way things have snowballed because of the success of those years, it’s true that the events surrounding Paul’s death were one of the things that kick-started everything. There’s a bond there that we’d feel would give us an advantage over other teams.” A silver lining, then. Not that it could ever make up for the cloud. Logged -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- An ounce of feeding equals a tonne of breeding www.cushendunemmets.com/CUSHENDUNPIC3.jpg
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madmac999
Senior Member
Who Put the ball in the Tarbert Net????
Posts: 724
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Post by madmac999 on Oct 15, 2005 18:29:18 GMT
Very good article. Really puts things into perspective. Would never be-grudge Tryone of any success they have no matter who they beat.. and that includes Kerry.
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Post by kerrygold on Oct 24, 2005 12:14:56 GMT
I was up north at the weekend and even talking to tyrone people who are not directly involved with football there was a very strong underlying feeling that they wanted badly to win this one for cormac.
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Post by mourinho on Oct 24, 2005 12:58:24 GMT
fat tom you are a legend boy .......full of opinions do you ever get sick of talking football ..... bring on sheahan ...what will he do get a few frees is it.... he got his opportunity against cork and he did nothing considering how much kerry dominated........
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seamus
Fanatical Member
Posts: 2,741
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Post by seamus on Oct 24, 2005 14:09:16 GMT
Admin,
Is it time to remove this thread? It has been analyzed to death me thinks...................
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Post by homerj on Oct 24, 2005 14:13:28 GMT
well, not remove it, but lock it anyway!
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Post by Cornelius on Oct 24, 2005 16:16:15 GMT
Lads its nearly november forget will ye!
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