Brian Dooher: 'We just didn't cope with Donegal runners'

Eleven months after ending Donegal's 2023 with an eight-point win in Ballybofey, Tyrone had a rather different experience by the Finn on Saturday night.

Brian Dooher, Tyrone's joint manager, could only look enviously at the transformed opponent.

Last summer, Ruairi Canavan hit an early goal as Tyrone won a preliminary quarter-final 1-18 to 0-13. Aidan O'Rourke was in interim charge of Donegal following Paddy Carr's early abdication.

The return of Jim McGuinness has, not for the first time, turned Donegal's fortunes.

On Saturday night, Donegal buzzed to a 0-21 to 0-14 win over Tyrone. Their purpose grows by the game, it seems.

“It's a different Donegal team today,” Dooher said afterwards.

“They've a lot of men who weren't there last year, Jim has added a lot of energy to the group.

“We just didn't handle the hard running, Donegal came at us in the second-half and broke lines and created good scoring chances.

“They deservedly won it, they were the better team, in the second-half particularly.”

Tyrone registered seven wides in the first half, after which Donegal led 0-10 to 0-9 thanks to Oisin Gallen's point just before the break.

It was anyone's game at that stage but, before a close-to capacity audience, Donegal grasped the chance in the second half.

Dooher said: “We just didn't cope with Donegal runners in the second-half as well as we did in the first-half. In the first-half they got through a few times, we were lucky not to concede goals maybe.

“In the second-half they really came at us hard and we struggled with that a bit.

“They're all good footballers across the field and we know that, I just thought they broke lines and overlapped on us and it makes it very hard defensively, once you have two v ones, even a one v one in a shooting zone.”

Eoin McElholm, Michael Rafferty, Shea O'Hare and Ronan Cassidy from Tyrone's All-Ireland winning under-20 panel have been added to the senior ranks.

The Red Hands will still expect to reach, at least, a preliminary quarter-final.

Dooher said: Today was disappointing, there's no point in saying otherwise.

“Boys tried hard, it didn't work for them and they were beaten by a better team on the day, you have to dust yourself down and go again.”