IT took the mother of all the Canavans to succinctly sum it up. Mrs Canavan, mother of match heroes Peter and Pascal, covered the main points with: "It was very tough, but we only played well in patches." I was worried, as I am sure many a Tyrone follower was. Brilliant to win it."

It also took her son Peter, the team captain, almost 10 minutes to reach the presentation platform on the Gerry Arthurs stand. It seemed as though most of the 33,000 crowd wanted to congratulate him.

Despite his early second-half goal, Peter did not mind being upstaged by brother Pascal in this instance. Older brother Pascal (28) was the unanimous choice for "man of the match". He had given a supreme midfield performance on a day when Tyrone joined the elite group of Ulster teams to retain the trophy. It had been 20 years since Derry performed the same feat.

Tyrone's 6ft 4in goalkeeper, Finbar McConnell, had to use his long stride to the fullest to avoid his admirers' overwhelming intentions and reach the safety of the barriers when the final whistle sounded. Nobody would deny the value of his two match winning saves.

Tyrone joint manager Art McRory said: "We were out-weighted in the conditions. An approach of energy and endeavour went a lot further than skills today. Our forwards were sharper and our defence put more pressure on their forwards. We did not play well in the first half and half-time came at the right time for us."

He added: "I saw it as a match of attrition and we were sometimes outmanoeuvred for experience in many places. The script was fired out the window for us at the start of both halves when we dominated so decisively, but we struggled towards the end of both halves.

"We are going to have to reach the heights we attained against Derry to win matches. We are very relieved and will now be focusing on Meath, nothing further thank that for the moment."

The Canavan brothers had their say. Pascal admitted that they had been worried about the Down forwards before the match, but was glad to see the Tyrone cover, especially Paul Devlin, respond so well.

"Paul is long overdue the credit he deserves. In attack, Brian Dooher kept us in it in the first half when we needed a quality performance," he said.

Peter said he was pleased with his goal in the second half, but felt the rest of his game "was not up to scratch". How modest can you get?

"It was an encouraging battling performance by us. I felt that the goal came too early in the second half for me to think it was going to win the match for us, but thankfully it stood to us on the scoreboard at the end," he said.

Pete# McGrath thought, as did many others, that Down could have won on scoring chances, but added: "Scoring chances are one aspect, but what is going on in between the chances is every bit as important".

He told the Tyrone players that they had given a performance of heart, hunger and skills. "Peter Canavan took his goal chance well and left us playing a chasing game. We needed one or two extra scores to put the pressure on them. It was not to be. The better team won.

He said that his squad will settle down to discussing the future. "This is an individual thing and I am sure we will all make the right

Micky Linden, the team captain, indicated that all his team-mates will be positive when looking into the future, saying: "We will be back again next year. Regardless of what ye lads say about us we are not that old". Most of all he rued the chances his team missed most - the wides tally was 12-7.

The feeling was that Greg Blaney, although having a fine game, could be among those to call it a day. Interestingly enough, his marker for much of the second half was his first cousin Fergal Logan, a son of his mother's sister.

D J Kane was the worst casualty in an uncompromising match. He sustained a cheek bone fracture and had to retire early in the game.