Mickey Harte pointed to key half-time adjustments as Tyrone turned things around to topple Cork.
Five points behind at the break, Tyrone were facing the prospect of having to beat Dublin in Omagh in two weeks’ time to stay in the Championship though a Cathal McShane goal and Peter Harte penalty helped them to a 2-15 to 2-12 victory.
Long-serving manager Harte made three substitutions at half-time which helped to turn the momentum of the tie in his side’s favour.
He said: “That’s what half-time is for, its for assessing how you have been and how the game plan is unfolding and do you need to do something different and of course when you are five points down you need to do something different so we had to make adjustments within the structure of our side and obviously that involves some new personnel.
“Sometimes you do these things and they don’t work because you don’t get the result but today they worked and we got the result.”
He added: “You don’t defend a five point deficit you attack it. We had no choice we had to go and attack it and when you are attacking game like that against people who have the running power of Cork you are definitely leaving yourself more vulnerable at the back but I think the fact we got our scores back so quickly was a real bonus because we got that off our backs and we weren’t chasing the game anymore.”
Cork manager Ronan McCarthy rued the concession of 2-2 between the 42nd and 46th minutes.
He said: “They are an experienced side, a top side and they were probably going to have a period of dominance and what was critical from our point of view was that we conceded so much so quickly.
"We were from five up to two down in the space or what? Three or four minutes?
“It’s poor from our point of view but at least we came back and kept at it and kept going up the field and trying to score but as it went on I felt the game was probably played more on their terms than ours.”
If you haven't already, be sure to like our Irish Mirror Sport and Irish Mirror GAA pages on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
