Tyrone beat Fermanagh to earn their place in the Dr McKenna Cup semi-final

By John Hughes

It’s not a sight you actually see much in nature documentaries, but when you do it’s still shocking. Usually we see the prey pursued right up to the point where it makes a plucky escape, living to fight another day.

But every now and again David Attenborough will intone solemnly as the seal nicks the penguin off the iceberg, or the eagle leisurely tears the prone rabbit’s innards asunder.
Hunting is a blood sport, and those lions don’t get so heavy and muscular from all the great cardio they’re getting.

That was how one might have felt on the Sunday when Tyrone went after Fermanagh. The Red Hands are remorselessly focused on winning games.

How they go about it might not leave you feeling all fuzzy and warm inside, but you have to admit it’s bloody effective.

Tyrone are the only Ulster team to really have taken the lessons taught by Kerry to heart.
Page one in that guide of how to win matches must bear those euphemistic words, ‘Game management.’

The golden generation of Kerry footballers were the undisputed masters of killing their opponent’s momentum. Go back and watch your All-Ireland Gold and you’ll be amazed how blatant it is.

Any time the opposition are trying to build from their defence they are stopped at the inexpensive cost of a free. Back in those days, the free was taken off the ground so players had all the time in the world to filter back. It was a slow motion blanket defence.

Another favourite of the golden generation of Kingdom footballers was slashing down the tall poppy. The opposition’s key player would be identified and neutralised as a factor in the game, be that by fair means or foul.

Tyrone were poor against Fermanagh in the first half. But they kept themselves in contact by dint of a few cheap frees from Ronan Barry and a masterclass in frustrating any attempts by Fermanagh to really get their game going.

All teams get their periods in a game when they are on top. Game management is a strategy which means that you ensure your opponent spends most of their purple patch taking frees from their own 45 metre line, picking up yellow cards and waiting for your players to get treatment than they do sticking the ball over the bar.

Obviously, when your purple patch comes you get on the referee’s case should any of these strategies be turned against you.

Game management is a philosophy where what is sauce for the goose is most emphatically not sauce for the gander.

It is cynical football and when you’re on the receiving end of it, it is particularly galling to watch. Like a bout where two boxers aren’t fighting by the same set of rules. Teams attuned to game management know that the rule book is one thing, but the referee and what he gets to see is another.

Tyrone deployed their full arsenal of game management stratagems in the McKenna cup semi-final. In some respects, it is good to see. It takes this sort of edge to win All-Ireland’s, and it was starting to look like Ulster might be lacking that edge as Dublin, Kerry and Mayo stretched away from the peloton.

If Tyrone do go on and win an All-Ireland this year, many of us in Ulster will happily defend the sight of Tyrone players bunching around Kerry or Mayo defenders on their own 13 metre line and stopping them taking a quick free. After all, it’s just a case of beating them at their own game.

But you can’t deny that it leaves a sour taste in the mouth and it makes it difficult for the vanquished to concede they have been beaten fair and square.

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