It's sad, really, that the luckiest creature in O'Neill Park in Dungannon yesterday was the Alsatian dog who was rescued from the pitch he'd occupied for the entire first-half and put into exile during the half-time break of a match that was as dismal as they come.
At least the mutt's eviction spared it the indignity of continuing to provide more entertainment (through the various Keystone Cops efforts to capture it which had occurred during the opening half) than the footballers of either team managed to produce in an hour. Tyrone won, Cork lost, two men were sent-off but, all in all, yesterday's league encounter offered little of value to the 5,000-plus crowd.
It wasn't pretty this time around, but Tyrone have nevertheless managed to produce back-to-back wins to give added momentum to the quest for a place in the knockout stages. Cork, with two defeats since the league's resumption, are going backwards and the failure to introduce any substitutes yesterday, when things were blatantly going against them, makes you wonder if the resources are really there.
This match was played a notch above neutral in the first-half, and only marginally moved up a gear in the second. But it was poor all the way, with numerous handling errors, misdirected passes, bad shooting, from both play and frees, and the only good element about the game was some impressively strong defensive work: Tyrone's Seamus McCallan had an excellent game at centre half back and his fellow defenders worked hard to pressurise the Cork men whenever they did venture forward.
And Cork's Michael O'Donovan, handed the task of marshalling Peter Canavan, did as good a job as anyone in recent years. Canavan scored four points, but only one of them came from play, and generally O'Donovan's performance was well ahead of his team-mates who failed to get any rhythm going throughout the match. The wonder is that only two points separated Cork at the final whistle from a Tyrone team who took the lead in the third minute and were never subsequently headed.
Tyrone were the dominant force, closing down the Corkmen and winning the vast majority of the breaking ball. The Northerners led 0-6 to 0-2 at the half-time whistle and were worth their lead. Canavan set them on course with three pointed frees and then Ciaran Loughran (twice) and Ger Cavlan kicked points from play to confirm their superiority. Cork's timid response came from two Padraig O'Mahony points, one from play and the second, in injury-time, from a free.
Cork's only moment of fulfilment came early in the second-half when O'Donovan reneged briefly on his job of shackling Canavan to sally the length of the pitch and kick the game's best point. But such Cork innovation was in short supply and, in the main, Tyrone created the better chances, none more so than a fine move involving Paul Devlin, Mattie McGleenan and Peter Canavan which finished with goalkeeper Des McAuley making a quite splendid save with his legs to deny Canavan.
Sadly, there were no further end-to-end moves for the rest of the game and, given the niggly nature of the game which had referee Eddie Neary award nearly 60 frees, it seemed inevitable that someone would be sent to the line. It happened in the 53rd minute when Cavlan was booked for a second time in the space of a minute - but Cork's numerical superiority was short-lived, because O'Mahony followed him to the line just two minutes later for retaliating to a jersey pull from Devlin.
Tyrone actually failed to score for the last 11 minutes of the low-scoring match, their final contribution to the scores coming from Canavan's only point from play in the 49th minute. Even the two dismissals failed to liven things up sufficiently for Cork to up the ante and their only reply was a pointed free from Ciaran O'Sullivan in the 56th minute.
After that, the game petered out - but many spectators had already given up and made for the exits by the time referee Neary finally ended the misery and blew his whistle one last time.
TYRONE: F McConnell; P Devlin, C Lawn, P McGuirk; C Holmes, S McCallan, C Gourley; D McElroy, Pascal Canavan (0-1); G Cavlan (0- 1), E Gormley, C Loughran (0-2); A Cush, M McGleenan, Peter Canavan (0-4, three frees). Subs: S Lawn for Cush (46 mins), R Thornton for Loughran (60 mins).
CORK: D McAuley; M O'Donovan (0-1), R McCarthy, A Lynch; S Og O hAilpin, O Sexton, M Cronin; N Murphy, L Honohan; A Dorgan (0- 1), C O'Sullivan (0-1, free), P O'Mahony (0-2, one free); Michael O'Sullivan, J Kavanagh (0- 1), Mark O'Sullivan.
Referee: E Neary (Sligo).
