Harte surgery works wonders for Tyrone

GAELIC FOOTBALL:THE CAST mightn't have changed much during the 2008 championship but the plot veered off script. Football's continuing capacity to throw up surprises maintained interest until the very end of an interesting if not absolutely absorbing season, writes Seán Moran

That Kerry would be back looking to complete the first three-in-a-row in 22 years was hardly a major twist, but the renaissance of Tyrone would have looked a long shot, especially after an unimpressive NFL and defeat in the Ulster championship by Down albeit after extra time in a replay that turned into one of the matches of the summer.

To manager Mickey Harte, that evening in June, the summer couldn't reasonably have held out much hope of the glorious conclusion that awaited. But once again an All-Ireland quarter-final against Dublin proved transformative. Up until that point Tyrone looked as if they were going through the motions, having arrived in the last eight after scraping past a listless Mayo side, who should have been out of sight by the end of the match.

Just as they had done in 2005 - and as Armagh had done for Galway and Kerry in 2001 and '06 - Dublin provided the booster rocket that enabled a struggling team soar into championship orbit.

First though, look at the hand that Harte had been dealt. Of his All-Ireland-winning attack in 2005, Stephen O'Neill and Peter Canavan had retired, Brian McGuigan was battling the scars of an horrendous sequence of injuries and Owen Mulligan's form was gone. Captain Brian Dooher was at an age when the perpetual motion on which his game is built was getting harder and harder still because of debilitating injury.

Coping with adversity could have been the title of Harte's doctoral thesis but surely there had to be a limit even for the Tyrone manager's proven ability to formulate problems and apply a range of analytical methods in pursuit of a working model.

This year he looked to have no options beyond the fire blanket of positioning Seán Cavanagh at full forward and hoping that by allowing him roam around the attack the team could improvise a way around his absence from centrefield. Somehow Cavanagh delivered an extraordinary season of athleticism, score-taking and leadership and the rest of the team rose to his inspiration.

But Harte pulled other rabbits out of the hat: Justin McMahon's rookie season at full back ended with him a shoo-in for an All Star, his brother Joe's redeployment to corner back for the final helped lock up a Kerry full-forward line in which only Colm Cooper consistently thrived, Colm McCullagh's strategic drift to the half forwards opened up new possibilities for the team and the player and the last-minute changes in the attack saw Martin Penrose and Ryan Mellon play significant roles in distorting and exposing the champions' defence.

Kerry's three-in-a-row lived and breathed until the last minutes of the season but when Pascal McConnell poked away Declan O'Sullivan's shot the air exhaled from the champions' challenge and Tyrone rattled off three points with a bravura display of clinical finishing. The point has been made that but for the capricious fate that ordained McConnell's save, the three-in-a-row would probably have been achieved but there had been fissures in Kerry's season.

Hindsight is about perspective as much as perception and the failings that haunted the champions had been evident even if not universally considered likely to derail their championship prospects. A defence that got into the habit of leaking too many scores and a loss of discipline that cost the team its captain Paul Galvin for nearly the entire season and Darragh Ó Sé for most of the three matches against Cork were negative indicators going into the big day.

As in the case of Galway hurler Tony Keady nearly two decades ago, it was the county's response to Galvin's suspension and the expenditure of energy and emotion in trying - ultimately successfully although in a strictly Pyrrhic sense - to get the six-month suspension reduced that proved nearly as disruptive as the player's loss.

Manager Pat O'Shea walked away after the expiry of his two-year term, probably exhausted by the constant pressure of keeping the game's biggest show on the road and having done his bit for the county's roll of honour statistics even if his second year involved the loss of three finals, NFL, Munster and All-Ireland.

The chasing pack didn't get any closer. Having recovered from their lockout early in the year, Cork staged three extraordinary comebacks in the matches against Kerry, winning, drawing and eventually losing: an apparent improvement on previous Croke Park meetings with the neighbours but on neither occasion could the team have been said to have played to their potential. Still Conor Counihan won't be unhappy with the season given the fraught circumstances in which he took over.

This year's heart-warming was done by Wexford under the guidance of a smart young manager, Jason Ryan from Waterford. Unbeaten in League and championship until the spanking by Dublin in what was their first Leinster final in 52 years, Wexford recovered astonishingly to eliminate Down, for whom the defeat of Tyrone proved an end rather than a means towards an end, and Armagh, Ulster champions for the seventh time in 10 years and in early summer shaping up as reborn contenders. Even Tyrone in the All-Ireland semi-final failed to extinguish the Wexford challenge and Ciarán Lyng's goal fired a gripping revival that was only eventually subdued.

Paul Caffrey's Dublin beat came to an end in disappointing if bleakly familiar circumstances: the team, having conquered Leinster for the fourth year running, crumpled in the face of adversity when Tyrone came tearing at them through the monsoon season that swept Croke Park in August. That adversity gave the stadium an opportunity to shine, which it duly took.

More rain fell on the venue between the above match and Kerry-Galway a week earlier than on New Orleans. But the levee didn't break and both matches were played to conclusion even as Jones's Road flooded outside.

Dublin football had something to cheer earlier in the year when St Vincent's took the road less travelled by edging through the club championships as rank outsiders and scalping the two biggest names in club football, Crossmaglen and Nemo, en route. Two of the central figures in that success, Pat Gilroy and Mickey Whelan, have been entrusted with the task of making it happen on the intercounty stage.

Other notable successes in 2008 included Tyrone's epic two-match All-Ireland minor final triumph over a fine Mayo team and the rehabilitation of the International Rules series.

The new rules appeared to provide the series with a decent handicap, as there was no more than a score between the teams after two Tests whereas both Ireland and Australia played robustly without misbehaving.

From a GAA point of view the sense of relief was embroidered with a first series victory Down Under in seven years.

Stand-out performances came from captain Seán Cavanagh, whose intense commitment to the series and competitive nature went hand-in-a-hand with a cheerful off-field demeanour that proved a major asset in the diplomatic offensive, his deputy Graham Canty, copper-fastening his status as Ireland's best international player with another series award and Kieran Donaghy, whose exuberant adaptation to the game made a huge contribution to the success.

What We Already Knew

That Tyrone, their attack bereft after the retirements of Peter Canavan and Stephen O'Neill and together with sundry injuries and losses of form, couldn't really compete at the top level any more.

What We Learned

That we were wrong and that with Mickey Harte sending out a team, anything is possible.

What We Think Might Happen

That we might get a chance to see Tyrone conduct an All-Ireland defence free from the Biblical plagues of misfortune that befell them in '04 and '06?