'This group has serious heart' - All-Ireland joy for Tyrone

BBC News

3 days ago

Tyrone boss Darren McCann praised his side's "heart and determination" in Sunday's All-Ireland Ladies Intermediate final victory over Laois. The Red Hands captured their first title since 2018 with a 2-16 to 1-13 victory at Croke Park Aoife Horisk and substitute Katie Rose Muldoon scored goals in either half to help the Red Hands avenge last year's agonising one-point decider defeat by Leitrim, much to McCann's delight."On the sideline, we felt totally in control," he said. "We were creating chances but we just weren't taking them, which was frustrating for us."When we play relaxed football, we are a hard team to stop and we played relaxed football, especially in the second half."The whole group have serious heart and determination as a collective and that was a collective performance. I was really happy with their performance today and the key thing was getting on top and staying on top."
But while Tyrone toasted an immensely satisfying triumph, Antrim were left disappointed after being edged out by Louth in the Junior decider.The Saffrons started strongly, scoring an early goal, but Louth fought back to eventually win 0-13 to 1-8 and deny the Ulster county their fourth title at the grade - and first since 2022.For joint manager Chris Scullion, it was a case of Antrim not taking their chances in the second half. "It just didn't fall our way today. It seemed to be mistake after mistake sometimes and we were constantly trying to regroup the girls to go again, go again," said Scullion, who leads the team alongside Michael Devlin."It maybe took a toll on them, but I'm not taking anything away from Louth. Louth were brilliant today. They set up defensively, kept their same structure and they were able to break out and it caused us problems. "They were able to work the ball around and get their scores. Fair play to them."