Mulligan leaves Dublin blue

Tyrone 2-18 Dublin 1-14: There was a sense of inevitability hanging over Saturday's Bank of Ireland All-Ireland semi-final from the moment Stephen O'Neill's digitally precise penalty hit the net in the seventh minute.

Dublin had been enthusiastically trading punches in the sparkling flurries of the opening four minutes but the goal put them down and left then groggy and desperate for the remainder of the match.

The brief glimmer of hope that twinkled at the Leinster champions during a sustained assault in the third quarter was extinguished by the concession of a soft goal that doubled the deficit back to six points.

Nothing went right for Dublin in front of an attendance of 81,882. The penalty was later revealed by a different camera angle to have been a spectacular and legitimate tackle by Stephen O'Shaughnessy on Seán Cavanagh although referee Gerry Kinneavy couldn't really be blamed as from his perspective the challenge looked like a foul.

Tyrone's second goal was a combination of a poor kick-out and a failure of concentration that allowed Cavanagh set up Owen Mulligan for the knockout punch.

After just 25 minutes Dublin's Alan Brogan, who had started really well, had to be replaced because of a leg injury.

To attach too much significance to the losers' bad luck would be a grotesque misrepresentation of the match. Tyrone were very good and outclassed their opponents.

Anyway it wouldn't be reasonable for anyone to expect Mickey Harte and his team to get too cut- up over the misfortune of others given what they suffered in the two Ulster final matches with Armagh.

Nothing that befell Dublin changed the outcome but the match would have been more of a contest had they got the breaks because Paul Caffrey's team showed good fight and spirit in the face of a much superior force.

Both teams made changes before the start. There were poker-faced narratives about stomach upsets and injuries but none of the three switches caused huge surprise.

Paddy Christie and Coman Goggins were left out of the Dublin defence with Peadar Andrews and Darren Magee coming in, the latter at centrefield allowing Shane Ryan switch to wing back.

For Tyrone Joe McMahon, who had impressed in the drawn match as a centrefield trouble-shooter, came in for Peter Canavan and enabled Cavanagh move to wing forward where he had similarly thrived two weeks previously. McMahon also switched to full back in the second half, as Harte had the luxury of replacing three different players on that line, each of whom had received yellow cards.

The one big fear for Dublin reviewing the drawn encounter had to be that their opponents' second-half transformation would be more sustainable than their own first-half dominance. That turned out to be putting it mildly.

Tyrone kicked on and dazzled as an attacking force. Dublin's defence was unnerved and not only struggled to cope with their opponents but needlessly gave away possession with poor distribution from the back.

Stephen Cluxton's kick-outs went haywire although to be fair to the goalkeeper his shot stopping kept out two first-half goal attempts that, had Ryan Mellon and Mulligan obliged, might have emptied the ground by half-time.

That turned out to be a rare lapse by Mulligan, who gave a man of the match display in the left corner and demonstrated emphatically that he was back on form - he even managed to catch a stray dog that had entered the fray. As the match went on it became clear that the two outrageous dummies he had sold on the way to a confidence restoring wonder-goal in the first match must count as amongst the costliest ever bought by a defence.

Of his 1-7, a goal and five came from play, and he took on the scoring burden that Stephen O'Neill had been carrying, freeing O'Neill to play a devastatingly constructive role in the attacking blitz.

Cavanagh again looked more at ease running the wing and captain Brian Dooher had a phenomenal match, doing his usual square-to-square shuttles but also managing to ghost free of Paul Casey and shoot three points.

Dublin's difficulties at the back were exacerbated up front by an inability to move sufficiently quickly to create decent chances for the inside forwards. In the end only Conal Keaney had reason to be pleased, as he added another good performance to the previous day's and kicked three points from play.

As in the second half of the first match, however, Dublin weren't able to move the ball quickly enough to pressurise Tyrone and when Brogan limped off the menace that his injections of pace posed departed with him.

To put the tin hat on it an old spectre reawoke and Tomás Quinn, whose dead-ball heroics had done so much to get the team to the business end of the summer, went on the blink with his free taking.

Three kicks in the very position from which he's notably thrived - a bit out but not too difficult an angle - went wide and the cracks in the team's self-belief spidered out around the ground.

The half ended messily with Brian McGuigan stretched by a high-ball challenge from Keaney and Jason Sherlock, captain for the day, similarly indisposed after an off-the-ball incident that saw Mickey McGee yellow carded when the teams re-emerged after the break.

Caffrey gambled in the second half that St Brigid's forward Declan Lally's speed would enable him to fill in as a wing back to keep an eye on Cavanagh. Instead he was robbed for the crucial second goal.

It was crucial because in their most commendable passage of play Dublin had raged back into the match, stringing together five unanswered points in six minutes. As the big, blue house rocked in anticipation of the imminent assault on the now one-goal deficit, Tyrone made it two goals.

So the recent history in the endgame of Dublin's tenacity and Tyrone's tremors was never put to the test. The lead was too big. Mark Vaughan, declared free to play by the DRA on Saturday morning, eventually came in and hit a killer ball to Jason Sherlock, team captain.

For the second time in the quarter-final Sherlock's shot was saved by Pascal McConnell only for Dessie Farrell to complete the job and cut the margin to seven, 1-13 to 2-17, with three minutes left. Too little too late.

TYRONE: 1. P McConnell; 2. R McMenamin, 3. C Lawn, 4. M McGee; 5. D Harte, 6. C Gormley, 7. P Jordan; 8. E McGinley, 24. J McMahon; 10. B Dooher (0-3), 11. B McGuigan (0-1), 9. S Cavanagh (0-2); 12. R Mellon (0-2), 14. S O'Neill (1-3, 1-0 goal, 0-1 free), 12. O Mulligan (1-7, two points from frees). Subs: 29. S Sweeney for Lawn (24 mins), 25. B Meenan for Sweeney (53 mins), 17. E Bradley for McGee (63 mins), 20. P Donnelly for McGinley (68 mins). Yellow cards: Lawn (20 mins), McGee (35 mins), McGinley (40 mins), Sweeney (45 mins), McGuigan (71 mins);

DUBLIN: 1. S Cluxton; 2. P Griffin, 17. P Andrews, 4. S O'Shaughnessy; 9. S Ryan (0-1), 6. B Cahill, 5. P Casey; 8. C Whelan, 23. D Magee; 10. C Moran (0-1), 14. C Keaney (0-5, two frees), 12. B Cullen (0-1); 13. J Sherlock (0-1), 11. A Brogan (0-2), 15. T Quinn (0-2, one free). Subs: 19. S Connell (0-1) for Brogan (26 mins), 24. D Lally for Magee (half-time), 20. M Vaughan for Quinn (57 mins), 21. D O'Callaghan for Lally (60 mins), 26. D Farrell (1-0) for Keaney (67 mins). Yellow cards: Quinn (20 mins), O'Shaughnessy (33 mins), Vaughan (70 mins), Whelan (72 mins).

Referee: G Ó Conámha (Galway).