Too much Tyrone

For a start, don’t manage your club side at the same time. If you have to, for the love of God don’t guide them to the semifinal of the All-Ireland club championship. And when you do eventually get around to concentrating on the county team, don’t break your neck trying to win the National Football League. So what is Mickey Harte doing, exactly?
Well, it’s not so much him as it is his Tyrone players. Sometimes you just have to sit back and watch an unstoppable force hurtle ever onward. This crop of his has been threatening to germinate for a few years now and on the evidence of last Sunday, they finally have the look of contenders about them. Fermanagh came to Croke Park for the first time in 32 years and made a few early inroads, but they eventually got their comeuppance, 4-11 to 1-11, like kids who’d spent too much time hogging the swings at a playground.
This semifinal was tight for a while. Tom Brewster clipped 4 points from frees in the first half and Fermanagh, all running and sweating and hustling, actually trooped off a point ahead at the break. But then Sean Cavanagh caught John Bannon’s throw-in on the restart, and 20 seconds later, Peter Canavan had feinted and flitted his way to a one-on-one with Ronan Gallagher in the Fermanagh goal. The umpire was reaching for the green flag pretty much as soon as Canavan dropped the ball on to his right boot.
The next 4 minutes killed the game. Canavan and Cavanagh lobbed over a couple of handy points and then a bewildering three-man move left the Fermanagh defense looking like someone had tied their laces together and finished with Eoin Mulligan palming to the net. Tyrone were seven points up and half the crowd weren’t even back from the hot dog stand.
The remaining half hour was a bit of a trudge. Fermanagh knew they weren’t going to get back into the game and didn’t even stir significantly when Ryan Keenan’s goal drew them to within 4 points. Turns out, it was just a prelude to the best moment of the day. It was Canavan’s of course. Mulligan outjumped Michael Lilley and palmed the ball in the direction of the little guy, who, up until three years ago, was his gym teacher. Canavan collected 21 yards out, looked up to see Gallagher off his line and lobbed gorgeously over him like a volleyball player fooling the blocker.
And that was pretty much that. Mulligan had time for another goal and Fermanagh had time to tack on a few forgettable points. Tyrone stride purposefully on to their second league final in two years and, if they can keep everyone fit, a definite shot at the All-Ireland. We’ll soon find out if Harte knows what he’s doing after all.

LAOIS 1-14, ARMAGH 1-11
A few things to note before descending into the inevitable Mick O’Dwyer love-in here. Joe Kernan will lose precisely no sleep over not qualifying to play Tyrone in the final just seven days before Armagh’s first Ulster championship game of the year against Monaghan. Moreover, his side played most of this game without two of their best forwards (Oisin McConville and Ronan Clarke) and two of their best defenders (Kieran McGeeney and Enda McNulty — stretchered off after 20 minutes with a dislocated shoulder). The All-Ireland champions played with none of their customary zeal or desire and although it would be folly to try to take lessons from a game they had little intention of actually winning, it was interesting to see how limited they are when stripped of the steel for which they are famed.
All that said, the hat must be doffed to Micko. The skinny on Laois over the past decade has been that they had a swagger about them that hadn’t exactly been earned. They had a few sweet players, to be sure, but they lacked the lean and hungry look that makes men dangerous. They were a cocky shower, still living off the minor and under 21 success of a few years back. It makes a perverse sort of sense then, that the best-placed man to disabuse them of whatever notions they had of their lofty reputations would be O’Dwyer, he of the loftiest reputation of them all, every scintilla of it utterly earned.
And that’s what he’s done. He’s whipped them into shape, got them running clever off-the-ball lines, chasing and harrying for each other. Colm Parkinson was man of the match here, his a breathless, relentless display full of selflessness. When could anyone have said that in the past five years? Padraig Clancy has two, perhaps three, peers countrywide at midfield at the moment and in Joe Higgins, O’Dwyer has pinpointed the soul of this new Laois team. Higgins is a brave, bustling little corner back whose aggressive marking and impressive marauding remind you of nobody so much as a young P