NICKY RACKARD CUP.
Tyrone 2-19
Monaghan 1-10

In the end Tyrone experienced little difficulty in booking their place in the semi-final of the Nicky Rackard Cup as they increasingly dominated the second half of this contest in Killyclogher on Saturday afternoon last and they coasted to victory as the Monaghan challenge faded. Conditions were difficult with a strong wind and intermittent heavy showers which did affect the standard of play but overall Tyrone were thoroughly deserving winners. The game was originally fixed for Carrickmore but was switched to Killyclogher as the Carmen venue was deemed unplayable.
Monaghan were only ahead once in the entire contest and that after three minutes when Martin Murphy opened the scoring although they were still reasonably well in the contest at half-time when they trailed the home team by five points. They got that margin down to two points in the opening minutes of the second half but that was as good as it got as Tyrone raised the tempo and pulled away to win comfortably with Monaghan only able to register one further point in the entire second half. The twin strike force of Damien Casey on the '40 and Conor Grogan at full forward did most of the damage as they registered 2-12 between them, Casey with nine points and Grogan with 2-3.
Teams and Scorers: Tyrone: John Devlin, Chris Cross, Conor McNally, Mike O'Gorman, Mark Winters, Stephen Donnelly, Martin Grogan, Gary Fox, Padraig Mc Hugh 0-1, Sean Og Grogan 0-2, Damien Casey 0-9 (5f '65), Tiernan Morgan 0-2, Mathew Mulgrew 0-1, Conor Grogan 2-3, Kiefer Morgan. Subs: Aidan Kelly for M Winters, John Connolly for C McNally, Ciaran McCrudden 0-1 for T Morgan, Mark McCrory for G Fox.
Monaghan: Gerard Ruddy, Shane McNally, Sean Leonard, Kevin Crawley, Patrick Hannon, Peter Treanor, Seamus Loftus 0-1, Declan Crowe, Trevor Hilliard, Brian McGuigan 0-1, Martin Murphy 0-1, Fergal Rafter 0-1, Tadgh Campbell 1-0, Michael McHugh 0-6 94f, '65), Conor McKenna. Subs: Jimmy Lacey for P Hannon, Hugh Byrne for C McKenna, Nathan Adair for M McHugh, Patrick Finnegan for D Crowe.
Referee: Garrett Duffy (Antrim).

REACTION.
"There were certain things that pleasd me about that game particularly in the first half but I couldn't be pleased with the second half although I have to say it did look promising at half-time. The fact is we were in a strong position at half-time particularly having played against the strong wind but to be honest we just didn't turn up in the second half. It was probably a mixture of Tyrone lifting their game and also maybe us fading a little bit and I would have to give credit to Tyrone because I thought they played very well over the whole 70 minutes whereas we didn't play well over the whole match. Tweet

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