By John Harrington

Tyrone manager Mickey Harte admitted his team were beaten by a much superior Dublin in today’s All-Ireland SFC semi-final.

He felt they were chasing the game from the moment Con O’Callaghan fired Dublin’s first goal to the back of the net after just four minutes.

“I do believe the critical score was the goal,” said Harte. “Until that time, it could have been a bit of a face-off up to half-time, and I think if we had held out to half-time without the goal in the game, we might not have conceded as many points.

“But Dublin were always superior, and particularly after that goal, the game was played on their terms, not ours, and that was not what we set out to do.

“We held out to half-time trying to play the system that we know best, but it wasn’t proving very effective for us, so we had to change things up at half-time, and there’s a great gamble in that.

“It leaves you open to more sufferance at the back, but I can’t fault the players for their effort, and particularly in the second half, we asked them to give it all they had and see where that takes us.

“You don’t want to say that you can’t win the game, but the reality of the matter was that it was going to take a miracle turnaround for us to win the game.

“We wanted it to be a more respectable score-line at the end, and I feel it could have been, we had more chances to close the gap, but we didn’t take them.

“Was that because we were wayward, or was it because we were under serious pressure? We missed a penalty, various things that would have made the scoreboard more respectable, but it wasn’t going to hide the truth that Dublin were far superior today, and that’s a fact we have to accept.

“And maybe it’s a good insight to know what standard you need to get to now if you want to play at their level regularly.

“It’s the best Dublin team that I have faced in my championship career at senior level. I think you have to give them that now. I wasn’t sure before today if that was the case, but I think I can be quite sure of that now.”

Harte admitted his team didn’t help themselves at time with some poor decision-making, but put that down to the pressure that was being applied by Dublin rather than the occasion getting to the less experienced players.

“I don’t feel that the occasion got to them, but you have to factor in a few things,” he said.

“When people don’t make the best decisions, you have to think about what kind of pressure are you making these decisions under.

“It’s about maybe poor decision making, but forced by quality opposition.

“Yes, I’d feel that we gave away a lot of ball that we fought hard to win, we carried the ball into the tackle too much and lost it at vital times.

“So were orchestrators of our own downfall to that extent, but that’s a learning curve that we have to embrace and know that you need to be able to keep your possession under that kind of pressure and still make good decisions.

“To that end, it will still be a good experience for these players, because it’s a difficult one, and difficult experiences teach us more than not so difficult ones.”

Today’s defeat marked a sad end to Sean Cavanagh’s career as he was subbed off in the second-half after struggling to influence the match, but regardless of how it ended Harte was adamant the Moy man should leave the inter-county game with no regrets.

“Sean Cavanagh is with these Tyrone seniors as long as I am, and he was a faithful servant,” said Harte.

“He gave so much, he has so many accolades to prove his value across many, many spectres of awards.

“He has nothing to regret really, he gave it all he had. We were hoping that he would get another day before he finished his career, we haven’t been able to provide that for him, but I don’t think he’ll walk away with many regrets.

“There’s not many players will leave the game of gaelic football with all that he has achieved, particularly not in Tyrone anyway.”