"You can only play as good as you are let." Laois manager Ollie Phelan was stating the obvious after watching his charges fail to join Cork, Dublin and Kildare in the record books as hat-trick All-Ireland minor football championship winners on a slippery Croke Park pitch yesterday.
The Laois team, who were not without good possession, were out manoeuvred by a technically sound and tactically brilliant Tyrone side who were avenging last year's final defeat and registering their fourth success in the competition - their first since 1973. Tyrone's incisive and strong running game had the Laois defence on tenterhooks for long spells. They countered the attacking threat poised by Laois wing backs Brian McCormack and Aidan Fennelly and were often content to have only three players in the Laois half of the field.
Laois's attacking gambits were sluggish by comparison. Good ball to the front six was often too slow and cumbersome. Two first-half Tyrone goals proved hammer blows to Laois prospects and their ace attacker Brian "Beano" McDonald was being too closely marked for their front division to move in a way that had won them so many games over the past two seasons.
Laois chances of producing a last-ditch stand of the kind that had rescued them so many times earlier in the season were diluted not only by McDonald's enforced restrictions but also by the sending off of midfielder Brian Fitzpatrick with about seven minutes remaining.
Fitzpatrick had been booked minutes earlier for dissent.
Tyrone midfielder and captain Cormac McAnallen, who covered acres of ground, was thrilled with the goals and by the moves that created them. "They were clear examples of good, off-the-ball play," he said. The first came after only four minutes when Eoin Mulligan cleverly took up position to receive a classy, square back pass from Aidan Lynch.
Stephen O'Neill took on the entire Laois defence with a determined run which led to the second goal, this time by Enda McGinley who had astutely avoided the attentions of Laois fullback Brian Gaynor. Tyrone led by 2-6 to 0-5 at half-time. Manager Phelan said: "Had the arrears been a little less at that stage we may have given it a better shot".
Still, a plethora of Laois wides - eight in all in the second half - demoralised the Leinster champions even more so than McDonald's limitations. McDonald did manage good possession in a crowded Tyrone half, but he had to be satisfied with free kicks, a number of which he untypically sent wide.
Tyrone continued to be masterful in their application in the second half and by the 15th minute of the period they were ahead by 10 points, 2-10 to 0-6. It may not have been as comfortable for them at this stage had Mark Dunne, Kieran Kelly, McDonald and Fitzpatrick not been so wayward in their finishing. An emotional Tyrone joint manager Fr Gerard McAleer said: "The team worked so hard today - it looked to me they were prepared to die for each other." Cormac McAnallen revealed part of the secret behind Tyrone's success. "We have trained intensively, both physically and mentally, over the past 10 weeks and we were very conscious of our closing-down task, especially with Brian McDonald in their attack."
Tyrone goalkeeper Pascal McConnell, a brother of the senior county goalkeeper, Fergus, performed brilliantly in the first half, notably when somehow denying Michael Clancy a goal following terrific work on the right wing by Mark Dunne and Padraic Clancy. Padraic Clancy tended to uplift the Laois midfield area when he moved there in the second half, but it was the tactics deployed by Tyrone to drop players back into defence that proved a winning gambit in the final analysis.
Tyrone: P McConnell; G Devlin, M McGee, F Loughran; C Meenagh, D O'Hanlon, P O'Neill (0-1); C McAnallen, K Hughes; G Wylie, M Hughes (0-1), S O'Neill; A Lynch (0-5, two frees) E McGinley (1-0), E Mulligan (1-4, three frees). Substitutes: B McGuigan for M Hughes, 40 mins. R O'Neill for K Hughes, 46 mins.
Laois: J Graham; R Jones, B Gaynor, C Clear; A Fennelly, P Leonard, B McCormack (0-2); B Fitzpatrick (0-1), J Behan; M Dunne, B McDonald (0-7, three frees), K Kelly (0-1); J M McDonald, P Clancy, M Clancy. Substitutes: B O'Connell for M Clancy, 36 mins; J Moran for J M McDonald, 49 mins; D Walsh for Dunne, 46 mins.
Referee: M Curley (Galway)
