For the last few weeks, Mickey Harte will have been watching James McCarthy’s goal over and over again.
That was the play that sank Tyrone when these sides met last back in July and Mickey Harte will have been studying it in great detail.
GOAL! Great run by James McCarthy! pic.twitter.com/0m5MOnEGXJ
— The GAA (@officialgaa) July 21, 2018
Because James McCarhty shouldn’t have been able to waltz through the Tyrone rearguard like that. Mickey Harte will have realised that it wasn’t for a scarcity of men back that Tyrone were caught out.
The reason they were caught out was because they had men, men like Colm Cavanagh sitting back and marking the space. This allowed Dublin to camp outside the Tyrone screen, play the ball around for a few minutes while they plotted away past the blanket.
And Dublin nearly always do crack the code, they always get the overlap. Jim Gavin’s men have shown up every single defensive system they’ve come up against in the last four years from Monaghan to Tyrone all the way west to Galway.
The only team who have really stuck it to Dublin on more than one occasion has been Mayo and that’s because they don’t stand off Dublin, they man-up on them and they back themselves man-on-man to match them.
So many have been focusing everything on reducing the risk of losing the game that they’ve forgotten that you have to go out and bloody win it.
Mickey Harte has had many cracks at Dublin over the last few years and they’ve consistently failed but they’ve failed on the same tactics.
Colm Cavanagh drops as a sweeper and marks the space, so do a few other men too. Dublin steamroll over them, and even a tackler of Colm Cavanagh’s agression and physicality can’t lay a glove on them because they’ve too many bodies, they’re too quick to lay it off and they’re so bloody fast.
It works against other teams, it worked against Monaghan in the semi-final, but it won’t against Dublin, it never has, Colm Parkinson said on Thursday’s GAA Hour Show.
“Cavanagh has never played well against Dublin, Dublin show Cavanagh up. Cavanagh bullies other teams but he can’t bully Dublin…They need to stop this tactic,” said Wooly.
And the lads thought of a way to get the best out of Colm Cavanagh. To send him on Brian Fenton and let him battle it out with the Raheny man.
“This might be a big call but I think Colm Cavanagh dropping back consistently is a mistake against Dublin. He’s the only one that can physically match up to Fenton on the Tyrone team and he’s just abandoning him…He’s only marking him for kickouts.
“Imagine leaving someone of the quality of Fenton on someone who can’t match up to him physically, because it is just going to be someone dropping onto him, whoever is given that job.
“They need to man-up. If you give Dublin those extra men on the outside of the screen, you’re going to be snookered, they’re going to get the overlap and they’re going to patiently break you down.
“You saw Mayo against Dublin, at times, they might have had everyone bar two back in the one half, but everyone has a man…You can have loads of players back…And I think that’s how Mayo are able to put it up to Dublin, because they don’t give them those free men around the field where Dublin can figure it out…Man up on them, they have to, they have to all pick up a Dublin player,” said Wooly.
Conan Doherty references that James McCarthy goal.
“For that James McCarthy goal, he has just waltzed past Cavanagh and Burns in there. What’s the point in having those two in there? We need to push out a bit. Hampsey was a bit wasted in that game, look at how effective he was on Conor McManus.
“That might push Colm Cavanagh out a bit more then.”
Tyrone need to bring something new. A new role for Colm Cavanagh could be that something.
You can listen to Wooly, Conan and Stevie’s thoughts on the All-Ireland final this weekend.
