Tyrone left Croke Park yesterday evening considering what might have been, as the narrowest of defeats saw them once again tasting league final defeat following last year’s defat to Kildare in the Division 2 decider. Jim Gavin’s Dublin snatched victory from the aws of defeat with late points pushing them ahead of Tyrone, and a final score of 0-18 to 0-17 seeing the Dubs crowned league champions for the first time in 20 years. In the aftermath of this year’s loss, however, Mickey Harte and his side are set to look ahead with renewed positivity following a strong showing against the early favourites for the Championship.
“Hugely disappointing, but we’re very encouraged by the level of performance that we reached there today,” Harte said.
“We were ahead in the game for long parts of it. It’s a pity just that the time it mattered most we weren’t, but that’s life,” he added.
“We were in a good position a number of times to get a second point but we always missed them so they always could come back and level the game every time we tried to get our nose in front.
In terms of regrets and painful post-mortems, for Tyrone there will be few. Harte was happy that his side were undone by the narrowest of margins, and feels his side have prepared as best they can for the first round Championship clash with All-Ireland champions Donegal.
“We’re as well set as we can be. We’ve played a lot of competitive football this year and we’ve acquitted ourselves fairly well in important games. So now I suppose it’s a matter of rolling up our sleeves and going to Ballybofey and rising to that level of performance there, at least if we want to get a result out of there.”
“We were only a kick of a ball away from winning that game. If we’d won it then we’d be saying everything is good.”
“We were very happy with the level of performance we reached and if we’d won the game then pp would be singing our praises and just because we lost by a point shouldn’t take away from all of that energy and hard work that went into our performance.”
Listen to Mickey Harte’s post-match comments in full via the player below
Image: Tyrone's Sean Cavanagh and Joe McMahon dejected after the game
©INPHO/Ryan Byrne
