Donegal’s manager Jim McGuinness and Patrick McBrearty celebrate after the penalty shootout win over Armagh in the Ulster final. Photograph: James Crombie/InphoThe tactical battle in Ulster was an intriguing one with both teams making tactical masterstrokes and mistakes, while also changing up during the game. We will not go into the decision to press kickouts or concede them, but it was important. Instead, we will look at some small but intriguing elements of the game.
In the 49th minute O’Neill won a mark under the main stand in Clones and stroked the kick between the posts. This short execution of the mark to the edge of the shooting zones was certainly part of the Armagh attacking strategy. But over the course of the second half they executed this same type of pass on another four occasions, missing the shot twice, and twice electing to recycle the ball rather than shooting at the posts.
The match day programme expected Brendan McCole to match up with the Conor Turbitt, but he initially matched up with Andrew Murnin. This may have been a mistake by McGuinness as Turbitt started the game full of life and registered 0-3 inside the first 23 minutes before McCole was switched onto him. Surprisingly, the stand-out man-marking job was done by Oisín Conaty who gave a huge performance in shutting down the attacking threat of Ryan McHugh, completely negating him.
One of the key aspects of this in the first half was the structure in which Galway attacked, they did not commit men forward and clog up space. The fact that Mayo approached the game in a man-on-man style meant this left huge spaces for Comer and Finnerty to play in, often in isolated battles.