Tyrone manager O'Kane lauds Leitrim victory but admits bitter disappointment

Facing the media after being stunned in an All-Ireland Final when you start as hot favourites isn’t easy but Tyrone boss Sean O’Kane fronted up after last Sunday’s TG4 LGFA All-Ireland Intermediate Final and paid warm tribute to victors Leitrim despite his bitter disappointment.

Tyrone lost out  3-11 to 3-10 after launching a fierce fightback when they trailed by seven points but O’Kane felt the damage was done in the first half: “We didn't do a lot of things very good in that first half, we were always on the back foot and  I felt that when the penalty went in, we had too much to do. 

“We battled away but just ongoing through it, we had 16 wides and two short. I worked it out on the top of my head; 36% conversion rate from 60 and that was down to the defending Leitrim did, they played in numbers and we couldn’t get our shooting going early on, we just couldn’t.

“No point in having an inquest, it is over for another year and good luck to Leitrim and to Jonny Garrity, a good achievement. I wouldn’t call it embarrassing but we’re going into Division 1 next year and we were beaten by a Division 4 team - I’d rather be beaten by ten rather than a point.”

Leitrim’s running game caused Tyrone huge problems even thought they were well aware of what they would face: “If we had another five minutes, we could have pushed on again but that is the way it was. Their running game caused havoc - they are very fit and played it very, very wide and broke it numbers. It is not that we didn’t know but we couldn’t match it for whatever reason, be the occasion, we just couldn’t match it.

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“They were moving the ball quicker, we were moving into contact because we were trying to find gaps. We were slower at doing things than they were - take nothing away from them, Jonny has them well organised, they’re a small county and they have their day in the sun and it's brilliant for them.”

Indeed, O’Kane felt his side were lucky only to be trailing by two points at halftime: “I thought we should have been more down at halftime - Amelia brought off two great saves, we could have been dead and buried. I felt that two points wasn’t too bad and then they just racked up to four or five. We never gave up, we did come with a bit of fight but the reality was the best team won.”

Two lulls either side of halftime without scoring were crucial seem to be a trait of Tyrone’s play O’Kane agreed: “It has been a trait and our form - we seem to hit lulls like that where we have a lot of ball but we’re not clinical enough at times. Maria hadn't had a great day, she is normally one of our talisman, Chloe only got going the last ten or 15 minutes, Sorcha came on and made a difference, was energetic and all the rest. 

“We’re trying to work on a process of keeping the scoreboard ticking over but there are lulls in those ten minute periods that just seem to be the way we are.”

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O’Kane had no issues with the yellow card suffered by Joanne Barrett or the penalty awarded to Leitrim: “It was a yellow card, it might have been a red card - there are a whole lot of ways of looking at it. I thought we played well for that length of time that we were down, got a goal but we seemed to play with an urgency in the last ten minutes where we seemed to think this could happen but the reality was the damage was done earlier in the game.”