McGrath thanks experienced heads

An emotional afternoon for Down's manager Pete McGrath, who buried his mother earlier this month. He made his way through a sea of embraces in the tunnel linking the dressing-rooms, garlanded on this, one of his greatest days.

"It didn't look great," he said. "I thought in the first half we played some great football, but we were in trouble. Tyrone might have scored another couple of goals though. We were five points down 10 minutes into the second half and I think the fact that we came back tells us something about the spirit in the team."

It had been a day when the younger Down players revolved like satellites around the experienced core. McGrath caught the trend and appreciated it.

"Ross Carr's calmness was important. The scores he got were crucial and they came at crucial times. Ross and Mickey provided us with lots of important things in the second half today.

"It reminded me a little of Celtic Park in 1994, there was sort of an ebb and flow to the game. We looked increasingly dangerous as the game went on. Going forward we were confident. At the back, we got to terms with Gormley in the end."

It was an afternoon of economical forward play in the broiling heat of Omagh. McGrath saw much that hinted at a good summer.

"There was a lot of fluency and mobility in the game and a lot of clinical finishing. Scores were hard to come by out there and it would have been costly to waste chances.

"Shane Mulholland, playing his first senior game, moved well, took his free kicks well and he made a crucial block in the last minute just after he had given the ball away with a bad pass."

And the immediate future?

"We have four weeks to get ready now for the game against Armagh. They are formidable opposition, but winning any game in the Ulster championship gives you some momentum and a psychological boost."

Last out of the Down dressingroom was Ross Carr on the afternoon which he thought might have ended his career.

"Feelings like this, you wouldn't swap for the world," he said, "especially after the last two years. There were lots of mixed feelings about whether to go on or not. This could have been my last county game. There was a terrible fear of losing at half-time."

Whatever the intensity of the pressures exerted, Carr's performance had been top class throughout. A series of wonderful scores from play made him the man of the match by a landslide vote.

"It was nice to score from play. The last two years of playing, most of my scores have come from frees. If you score from play it gets your confidence going."

There are special ways in which to end your career, and Carr has planned his departure with care.

"If we had lost today I would have finished up having lost my last three championship games in a Down shirt. This year things have changed. We brought in about 11 new players and suddenly us older players felt more on the periphery of things rather than the other way around. Instead of going for the same amount of pints with the same faces, they were bringing us to discos. I don't know the last time I was at a disco.

"I remember going to a game just after Christmas and a wee girl came up to me and told me that she was in my daughter's class. That makes you think."

Ross Carr. Still thinking. Still scoring.