Ill-discipline readdressed, Tyrone look to keep their All-Ireland hopes alive

Given the fact Tyrone and Armagh were drawn on opposite sides of the Ulster football championship it is no great assumption that neither team ever once imagined playing the other a week after the final was already done and dusted.

Instead, their early exits made for one of the properly interesting sub-plots to the championship so far, and it reaches a head on Sunday in their opening round of the All-Ireland football qualifiers.

It will be six weeks since Armagh lost their Ulster quarter-final to Donegal, 1-16 to 0-12, five weeks since Tyrone lost theirs to Derry, 1-18 to 0-10, and four months since their tempest of a league match which finished with five red cards, four for Tyrone, and a two-goal win for Armagh.

Along with Mayo against Monaghan this Saturday in Castlebar, it’s an all Division One tie with plenty on the line, not least Tyrone’s hopes of defending their All-Ireland title.

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Like that league encounter on February 6th, Armagh have home advantage (throw-in at the Athletic Grounds is 1.30pm, winner on the day etc), that game coming three weeks after Armagh also beat Tyrone in the McKenna Cup, also at home, by three points.

Those five red cards bring another backdrop to Sunday’s match – particularly around Tyrone’s apparent ill-discipline which further hampered their Ulster title defence. They also had a player red-carded in their Ulster preliminary round win over Fermanagh, half-time substitute Conor McKenna, then again against Derry, midfielder Brian Kennedy sent off after 26 minutes after kicking out at Derry’s Gareth McKinless.

Against Armagh that league Sunday in February, normal time had just elapsed, six minutes of added time announced, Armagh a relatively safe five points clear. For reasons not immediately evident, a dozen or so players from each team suddenly got stuck into the other, wrestling around as if mimicking mixed martial artists.

Match referee David Gough’s mood for high physicality was already low: Armagh’s Greg McCabe was singled out first and shown a straight red, before Gough assembled four Tyrone players and flashed them all red in quick succession – captain Padraig Hampsey, 2021 player of the year Kieran McGeary, and defenders Michael McKernan and Peter Harte.

McKernan addressed that critical matter at the All-Ireland series media event in Croke Park on Tuesday, making repeated references to Tyrone’s ill-discipline and how they’ve been trying to improve on that act.

“Yeah, even in the Fermanagh game we just weren’t at the level, we still got through that thankfully,” says McKernan. “Then Derry just taught us a lesson the next day.”

“But we’ve had those five weeks of hard training now, we’ve reviewed our games and our season to date, we’ve looked at the discipline aspect, and just the basic skills, concentration within games.

“So we’ve done a lot of work on that over the last few weeks, and hopefully get back up the level we were at last year.”

Indeed Tyrone aren’t on entirely unfamiliar ground, given they concluded the league campaign last year with a heavy six-goal defeat to Kerry in Killarney and they managed to turn that around, winning their way through Ulster before stunning Kerry and then Mayo in the All-Ireland semi-final and final.

However, McKernan is adamant the commitment has been just as strong; again, ill-discipline proved costly and damning: “We certainly did prepare the way we did last year, but we knew throughout the league the discipline wasn’t where it was at last year, with the red cards, but tackling too, giving the ball away. So overall we maybe weren’t holding ourselves to the high standards we set last year.

“We’d a red card against Fermanagh, a red card against Derry, so that’s one of the major things we’re looking at, it’s maybe showing a lack of focus, as well as discipline, and that’s one of the main things we’ve been working on.”

Tyrone have also lost seven players since their All-Ireland win last year, and their defeat to Derry in Omagh highlighting the absence of players like Tiernan McCann, Ronan O’Neill or Mark Bradley, all renowned for making an impact off the bench.

“Them boys all had personal reasons, a lot of them getting married, or moving into homes,” McKernan says of the exodus.

“And they have been great servants. But we’ve brought in some of the under-20s now (recent All-Ireland champions), they’re pushing on, strengthen us even more, and we’d the under-17s winning there at the weekend too (Tyrone beating Derry in the Ulster minor final).

“Even for the neutral, we know Armagh is not a nice place for any team to go to, their fans get behind them, and the last game will be in the back of our minds, probably, we’ve played them twice this year and they beat us twice, but it’s something for Tyrone fans to look forward to also.”

Armagh manager Kieran McGeeney will be without midfielder Niall Grimley for Sunday’s game after he suffered a neck injury during a recent county training session. Another midfielder Ciaran Mackin was already ruled out due to a fractured eye socket sustained in the build-up to that quarter-final defeat to Donegal. Oisin O’Neill, older brother of Rian, has returned to full fitness and is likely to feature at some point.

McGeeney had insisted nobody was getting carried away after his Armagh team beat Dublin and then Tyrone in the opening two rounds of the league, that things are ultimately judged on the summer. Come Sunday evening, one of their summers will be over.