Ulster U20 Football Championship: O’Neill hails Tyrone ‘character’ in provincial success

Tyrone U20 coach Stephen O’Neill hailed his side’s character as they made it three Ulster titles on the spin.

The Red Hands recovered from a slow start to the campaign with defeats by Cavan and Armagh leaving them third in Group B, but recovered superbly in the knockout phase to account for Derry and Donegal before finishing the job against Monaghan in Wednesday’s final.

It is the fourth provincial title at the U20 grade in five years for Paul Devlin’s side who have also won the last two All-Ireland titles and O’Neill is proud of their latest journey.

“It’s been some journey and the learnings we’ve had, the ups and downs, the boys have responded,” O’Neill, a three-time All-Ireland winner as a player, told BBC Sport NI.

“It’s great for the character they’ve had their knock-backs and learned from their defeats. All of that hard work has paid off as they got two massive results in the quarter-final and semi-final, then tonight they put on a really good performance.”

While O’Neill is in his first year working with his native county’s U20s, for team captain Conor Devlin, it is a third Ulster medal.

Devlin scored 1-2 in Wednesday’s victory over the Farney men, saying “I don't think I’ve scored as much in a game in my life” but took greater satisfaction from Tyrone’s collective effort.

Noting they made some “tweaks” to their game-plan after two defeats from three in the group phase, he was happy to see them pay off.

With Ulster now secured, Tyrone’s sights will now turn to an All-Ireland semi-final on 13 May against either Kildare or Louth who are through to the Leinster final.

“We’ve ticked off eight games, so they are in the past and we’ll move on to the Leinster champions,” man of the match Devlin said.

“We played a few of them [Leinster counties] in challenge matches and they were brilliant sides, so it’s not going to be easy.”