NFL Division One: Tyrone 2-20 Dublin 1-16
Darren McCurry was the last player off the Healy Park pitch, having spent most of the afternoon as the main man on it during a day when Tyrone beat Dublin comfortably but were still relegated to Division Two for the first time in a decade.
On what was billed as a dramatic finale to the Allianz League, the endgame in Omagh instead played out to an anticlimactic finish.
The air had gone out of the occasion long before the Dubs fired over a flurry of late two-pointers to put some polish on the scoreline, and many in the crowd spent the latter stages of the game refreshing their phones to see what was happening in matches elsewhere.
Ultimately, Tyrone were relegated on seven points while Kerry made the Division One league final with eight – that’s how tight it all unspooled. Still, it would be wrong to describe the home dressingroom in Healy Park as crestfallen after this encounter.
Instead, we were left with a winning team relegated but nonetheless feeling grand about their steady progress of recent weeks, and a losing team disappointed by their performance but at the same time not exactly inconsolable at missing out on the Division One final. The league, what?
“All we could do is make sure that we kept our side of the bargain and then it was out of our hands,” said Tyrone manager Malachy O’Rourke afterwards.
“In fairness to the boys, they put in a great performance and we’ve seen that over the last number of weeks, we’ve been thinking we have been steadily getting better. It’s just unfortunate that the performance didn’t keep us up but that’s life, we just have to get on with it.”
Tyrone last dropped out of the top flight in 2015 but immediately bounced back up the following season.
McCurry was sublime on Sunday, irrepressible. He finished with 0-9, including a pair of two-pointers.
But perhaps the standout moment of the match was his ridiculous left-footed, outside of the boot, pass in the 14th minute, the ball drifting over the top of Davy Byrne and finding Darragh Canavan unmarked in behind. The pass was measured to perfection and Canavan met the moment with a lovely pirouette before smacking the ball home for Tyrone’s opening goal.
“Darren was really good, he had missed the last couple of games, he came in and looked really sharp, he was very accurate,” added O’Rourke.
“It’s great, that’s what we are looking to do all the time, get all our forwards and all our players playing to the top of their form. And certainly Darren was doing that today and it was great to see him doing it.”
Not for the first time all season, this was a game dominated by the wind. Tyrone had it on their backs in the first half and went in at the break leading by 10 points, 1-14 to 1-4.
Con O’Callaghan finished nicely for the game’s opening goal in the 11th minute after Niall Morgan – who had been lucky to escape serious injury when he fell dangerously early on – mistimed a high ball in by David Byrne.
Tyrone outscored Dublin 0-9 to 0-1 during the last 15 minutes of the first half and certainly it felt, given the strength of the gust, they needed at least a 10-point buffer going in at the turnaround.
However, Dublin’s expected fightback never materialised in what was a rather insipid and lifeless second-half performance. Dublin had overturned an 11-point interval deficit in a wind-dominated match against Kerry last month but such a comeback never looked remotely on the cards here.
In fact, after 20 minutes of the second half they had managed to add just a single score to their tally – that from a Seán Bugler two-pointer.
They rallied late on with a spate of two-pointers. Indeed, all six of their second-half scores were two-pointers. They also registered eight wides.
“[The wind] has been a feature of the campaign, big leads being whittled back,” said Dublin boss Dessie Farrell afterwards.
“We felt we were still in it [at half-time]. As it manifested, we had a horrendous third quarter in terms of our shooting efficiency, which ultimately cost us at the end of the day.
“Very disappointing. We were looking for a much better performance than we actually gave.
“It’s just a lack of energy, a lack of bite – there was something, it seemed as if it was a game with nothing at stake for us.”
In the tunnel afterwards, nobody could remember a team getting relegated from Division One on seven points. But recent memories of both Dublin and Armagh winning the All-Ireland from Division Two did come up in conversation. Going down isn’t what it used to be.
“Everybody wants to stay in Division One, it’s where the best eight teams in the country are on any given year usually,” added O’Rourke.
“You are playing against a very high level of opposition – there is no doubt we wanted to stay in it. But having said that, Armagh and Dublin have done well coming out of Division Two, Donegal as well last year, so look that’s just the situation we are in now and we have to accept it. Hopefully it won’t do any big damage in the long run.”
Out on the pitch, McCurry was still signing autographs and posing for photos. On a day Tyrone got relegated, there were no recriminations in Omagh, no talk of a crisis, no signs of alarm.
The league, what? Bring on the championship.
TYRONE: Niall Morgan (0-0-2, 2 45s); Aidan Clarke, Peter Teague, Niall Devlin; Michael McKernan (1-0-0), Rory Brennan, Kieran McGeary (0-1-0); Brian Kennedy, Conn Kilpatrick; Ciarán Daly, Mattie Donnelly (0-0-1), Aodhan Donaghy; Peter Harte (0-0-1), Darren McCurry (0-2-5, 1 2ptf, 3f), Darragh Canavan (1-0-3).
Subs: Seanie O’Donnell for Donnelly (41 mins); Ruairí Canavan (0-0-2) for Harte (55 mins); Michael O’Neill for D Canavan (57 mins); Shea O’Hare for Donaghy (65 mins)
DUBLIN: Gavin Sheridan; David Byrne, Theo Clancy, Conor Tyrrell; Cian Murphy, Seán MacMahon, Greg McEneaney; Brian Howard, Peadar Ó Cofaigh Byrne; Killian McGinnis, Seán Bugler (0-1-2), Niall Scully (0-0-2); Ross McGarry, Con O’Callaghan (1-0-0), Cormac Costello (0-4-0, 2 2ptf).
Subs: Ciarán Kilkenny for McGinnis (41 mins); Lorcan O’Dell (0-1-0) for McGarry (43 mins); James Madden for Ó Cofaigh Byrne (44 mins); Davy Keogh for Scully (56 mins); Eoghan O’Donnell for McEneaney (60 mins)
Referee: David Coldrick (Meath)
