Callum Daly revels in putting defence first as Tyrone look to retain U20 All-Ireland crown against Louth
Callum Daly's intuitive understanding and immaculate implementation of the sweeper role is one of many obstacles that Louth will have to contend with if they're to dethrone All-Ireland U20 champions Tyrone in Wednesday's decider.
The Omagh man's reading of the game has been a key factor in the Red Hands' progression to another decider and a shot at taking a third title in four years.
It was a defensive shut-out that sealed the semi-final victory over Kerry, the collective effort held together by the coolest, calmest man on the pitch.
'I've been playing this role for a few years now, and I suppose I've had a wee bit of success there, which is good. It's just really about protecting the house,' said Daly.
'We always say if we don't concede goals, then we'll win the match, so that's just the main aim.
'You're obviously playing against top players all across the country, and that really improves me as a player.' A defensive unit worked in perfect tandem at Portlaoise, where the holders closed down the Kingdom attack to carve out a 2-14 to 0-14 win.
'We did work on that, we've seen that from the start, from the analysis. And we had it sussed out, and to be fair to Ben Hughes, he did a real good job on Tomas Kennedey, who's obviously a very dangerous player.
'They play a very nice brand of football, but we just knew if we could match their workrate, then our quality would come through, because our forwards and our defenders have just been unbelievable all year.
'And we just knew if we could get that right, then we'd win the match.' Daly has displayed maturity beyond his years in perfecting the role he first took on a couple of years ago as captain of the Omagh CBS MacRory and Hogan Cup winning team.
His instinctive approach to the game may be a natural gift, but outside influences have played a part in his development, and it's no coincidence that this rising star's traits bear striking similarities to those of senior defender Rory Brennan.
'Rory would probably be one that I would look up to. I think his reading of the game is exceptional.
'So I just try and mimic stuff that he does, you know, and learn off him.'
U20 manager Paul Devlin and his coaching team have mentored many young Tyrone footballers over the past seven years, shaping their future in the game and providing a pathway to a senior career, a route that Daly and a clutch of his team-mats look set to follow.
'It's just testament to the coaching that I have had and the players that I play with, all unbelievable. We work hard at it, and it's just nice that it pays off.' Daly already owns one All-Ireland U20 medal, and he wants to go back-to-back with victory over Louth at the Box-It Athletic Grounds on Wednesday.
'You don't want to come all this way and come second place, you know. So we've got a big few days ahead to prepare for this final.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RTÉ News
an hour ago
- RTÉ News
The Championship: Knockouts get serious in both codes
joins Damian Lawlor to assess the weekend's preliminary quarter-finals in the All-Ireland football championship. Galway's trip to Down is probably the pick of the four football games, while Kerry seek to bounce back from last weekend's wobble at home to Cavan. In the other two fixtures, Cork face Dublin in Croke Park, while Louth make the arduous journey to Ballybofey to face Donegal. It's All-Ireland hurling quarter-final weekend, with John Kiely's Limerick heavy favourites against Dublin in Croke Park, while long-time foes Tipperary and Galway face off yet again at this stage of the competition in the Gaelic Grounds. Waterford's three-time All-Star Noel Connors previews both games, while Limerick's Cian Lynch and Galway's Fintan Burke chat ahead of both games. Follow a live blog on the All-Ireland Football Championship on Saturday and Sunday on and the RTÉ News app. Listen to updates on Saturday Sport and Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1. Watch highlights on The Saturday Game at 9.15pm and The Sunday Game from 9.30pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player. Watch the All-Ireland Hurling Championship quarter-finals, Limerick v Dublin and Galway v Tipperary, on Saturday from 3.30pm. Follow a live blog on and the RTÉ News app. Listen to updates on Saturday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1. Watch highlights on The Saturday Game at 9.15pm. Watch the Tailteann Cup semi-finals, Wicklow v Limerick and Fermanagh v Kildare, on Sunday from 1.30pm. Follow a live blog on and the RTÉ News app. Listen to updates on Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1. Watch highlights on The Sunday Game at 9.30pm.
Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
Lions diary: A relaxed Johnny Sexton, Dostoevsky and questions of identity
Monday Johnny Sexton's a crowd puller. Upstairs in the University Club in UCD, the phalanx of cameras and mics are tested and checked and when he walks in, the room instinctively leans forward. Outside, students sit around on the grass eating braised sesame tofu and ramen, taking the cool air from the Main Lake at O'Reilly Hall, unaware that Lions coach Sexton, in his official Lions lounge attire, is kicking off the tour. Scotland lock Scott Cummings is also here along with Ben Earl, the England backrow. Earl is into Fyodor Dostoevsky, a colleague whispers. A frenzied search on Google for Earl and Rugby and USSR suggests it might be true. Mum: industrial retail CEO. Dad: solicitor. Education: Comparative literature Queen Mary University. It leaves out – Profession: human wrecking ball. READ MORE Sexton, the coach, smiles a little more and appears less tense than Sexton the player, and especially Sexton the captain. He says rugby suits him more than Sexton the businessman. He is here, he says, because Andy Farrell asked him. For the former Irish outhalf and captain, he's happy that tracksuits and mentoring have replaced Ardagh's bottle and can mountain. Assistant coach Jonathan Sexton with head coach Andy Farrell. Photograph: Billy Stickland/Inpho 'It's hard to contribute because you're sitting in a room with people that have 20 years, 30 years' experience in the industry. Whereas that's me now – I've had 20 years' experience [in rugby],' he says. Nobody dares ask Earl about Dostoevsky, terrified he might talk about morality, freedom, faith, and the human condition through the lens of existentialism. Tuesday Which one is Felipe Contepomi, a young girl asks no one in particular. The sun is blazing down on the balcony at Old Belvedere and the Argentinian players look iridescent perspiring in the heat haze. At their base in the Radisson Hotel, they climbed out of the plunge pools set up in the garden and ambled in their budgie smugglers back into the hotel. Go Los Pumas! Today though, the blue sky and warmth spark off a brief personal reminiscence of glorious Nice and the last Rugby World Cup. Three weeks of belly up in the Med, occasionally drifting out to sea from La Promenade des Anglais, watching orange EasyJets low in the sky, wheels down coming into land. There is a drone or two in the air at Belvo, one of them peering directly down on a scrum on the far pitch. An answer comes back to the girl. Felipe's the one in the peaked cap. Small groups of people sprawled around the side of the pitch have turned up to watch. Inside, the former Irish Lion Ollie Campbell is the image you cannot fail to see turning from the bar to walk down the stairs. An eight-year Irish career but just 22 caps. Two Lions Tours, the first in 1980 to South Africa and in 1983 again to New Zealand. Seven Lions caps there. Former Ireland player Ollie Campbell. Photograph: Billy Stickland/Inpho This is, after all, Ollie Campbell Park and the picture is of Campbell in that famous kicking pose. Are there any other images of him not of the follow through after the kick, the boot of his straight right leg at shoulder height and the long striations of muscle and tendon. The drones come in to land as the players stream off the pitch. Felipe, now 47 years old, picks up his little boy and grabs a ball. It is 20 years since he was top scorer with Leinster in both the 2005–06 Celtic League and the Heineken Cup. It is seven years since he was appointed as the new backs coach for Leinster, succeeding Girvan Dempsey, who moved to Bath. A colleague points towards the entrance to the grounds at a house which backs on to the club car park. Matt Doyle used to live there, he says of the likable Irish American tennis player who sadly died less than five months ago. There's history in these grounds. The takeaway is some Matt, but more Felipe kicking ball with a little boy in the warm summer wind. Wednesday Team announcement day in Aviva Stadium. Andy Farrell and Maro Itoje walk in through the door to the media auditorium, the Lions coach in blue, the team captain in red. Farrell holds a fixed semi-smile that gives the Rugby League Man of Steel an amiable, big softie head. The Lion's secondrow, Itoje, looks like a mature student who could be finishing his PhD. Note to self: How looks can deceive. The pair sit at the top table. 32 journalists, 10 cameras, nine microphones. Itoje sits on Farrell's right. The table is covered in Lions livery with large lettering of the tour message. There is always a tour message, an aspiration. 'WE GO BEYOND.' Maro Itoje and head coach Andy Farrell. Photograph: Billy Stickland/Inpho 'It's the best of the best,' says Tommy Freeman of the squad during his interview. 'It's the best of the best,' says Tadhg Beirne when he arrives. 'We want to be the best version of ourselves,' says Farrell at the top table. 'We want to be the best version of ourselves,' says Beirne. Off-pitch the Lions are on message. That or they have been listening to double Olympic gold medallist Kellie Harrington from last year's Olympic Games. 'Everyone wants a gold medal, but I just want to be the best version of me,' said Kellie. Up in troubled Ballymena, the Lions team news may have been triggering for former captain Willie John McBride, who travelled on five Tours during the 1960s and 1970s and was 'bothered' by the non-native players Farrell selected in his squad. Bundee Aki, the only Irish back to play Argentina was born in New Zealand. Tighthead Prop Finlay Bealham and replacement winger Mack Hansen were both born in Australia. Scotland prop Pierre Schoeman and Scotland winger Duhan van der Merwe were born in South Africa. Scotland centre Sione Tuipulotu is Australian-born while England fullback Marcus Smith was born in the Philippines. James Lowe, Jamison Gibson-Park, the list goes on. The 1974 Lions trip had 'one in, all in' on the call of '99″ from captain Willie John resulting in the battle of Boet Erasmus Stadium. It is now 2025 and Willie John has been metaphorically 99ed for his views. Note to self: what goes around comes around. T h ursday Burgundy Thursday. The Aviva pitch is laid out perfectly like a Michelin star restaurant table. At the bottom of the stepladders by the pitch side hoarding sit four rugby balls on a large white towel. On top of each ball four smaller white folded towels have been carefully placed. All sit beside a stack of yellow bibs and more rugby balls organised in a row. Early signs of OCD at the first Lions captain's run to take place on a Dublin surface. Burgundy tackle bags bearing the Lions logo of the four unions are gathered up by Simon Easterby and taken to the goal area. Former England scrumhalf Richard Wigglesworth and Andrew Goodman (Beasterby, Wig and Goody) space them for the players' arrival. A terribly desolate place, this stadium when devoid of bodies. The echoes tell you nobody is here, an empty cathedral. But there is something about Aviva's size from the pitch that compels you to stand and aimlessly gaze up to the terraced seating. That is existential. BIL the mascot. Photograph: Billy Stickland/Inpho Then the players break out of the tunnel for 'The Captain's Run', a quaint exercise where accredited journalists stand at the side of the pitch for 15 minutes watching unusual things take place like Garry Ringrose deliberately throwing a pass to Tom Curry, or Henry Pollock breaking from the group with a four-foot cuddly lion called BIL (British and Irish Lion) and chucking him on a table at the side of the pitch. The England flanker is the youngest and responsible for BIL's safekeeping. 'This is basically your new girlfriend,' captain Itoje told Pollock. Just what a 20-year-old wants to hear. Itoje knows. He was BIL's former boyfriend as the youngest player on the 2017 tour. On the pitch injury-hit Irish prop Tadhg Furlong is doing his twisting runs from under the posts. Lovely hurling. James Ryan appears to be sitting it out and no sign of Jamison Gibson-Park. The vibe is upbeat, something like 'WE GO BEYOND'. All that's missing is Joe Schmidt's ghost rising from the West Stand.
Irish Times
2 hours ago
- Irish Times
Lions try out unlikely midfield combination against Argentina
The Lions' summer's business gets under way this evening with a warm-up against Argentina at the Aviva Stadium. As Gerry Thornley tells us, they'll be without 15 of the squad due to club commitments and injuries for a non-capped international that is 'primarily a moneymaking venture', one that, ultimately, will be 'a footnote in history'. Still, all concerned will be up for it, not least Argentina coach Felipe Contepomi who is not unfamiliar with the city of Dublin. Andy Farrell, says John O'Sullivan, has proved once more that he's not 'risk averse' by opting for 'an unlikely midfield combination' of Sione Tuipulotu and Bundee Aki , Tuipulotu more used to playing as an inside centre. Opportunity knocks, then, for the Scotland international in the absence of Garry Ringrose and Huw Jones. It's a huge weekend in Gaelic games with two hurling quarter-finals and four preliminary football quarter-finals in the schedule. Lose and your summer is done and dusted. After their hiding in the Leinster final, Joe Canning is hoping to see a vastly improved performance from Galway at the Gaelic Grounds when they come up against a Tipperary side 'with their tails up'. Galway's footballers have it all to do too when they meet a Down side whose 'confidence has been soaring' , Ian O'Riordan talking to Galway's Shane Walsh ahead of Sunday's meeting in Newry. READ MORE Meanwhile, those who might assume that this hooter business is the first timekeeping innovation in the history of Gaelic football ... Seán Moran has news for you: the Bogue Clock – the giant stopwatch that made its debut all the way back in 1938. In horse racing, Brian O'Connor reports on Trawlerman setting a track record on his way to winning Royal Ascot's Gold Cup on Thursday, and he previews today's action, Colin Keane choosing 'to stick with his old ally Babouche over Juddmonte's other big hope, Jonquil' in the Commonwealth Cup. In golf, Philip Reid reports on a good day at the office for Rory McIlroy at the Travelers Championship , his opening round of 64 putting him in contention, while Leona Maguire made a solid start to the PGA Championship in Texas with a level-par 72. No one topped Max Kennedy's exploits, though – he shot a course record 60 in France on the Hotelplanner Tour. Sadly, no one in the sports department was available to go sailing with Robert Dickson and Seán Waddilove in Dún Laoghaire and have themselves dangled over the ocean at a 45-degree angle giving you 'the same sensation as when you lean too far back in your chair and your life flashes before your eyes'. Except Muireann Duffy. Before you read about her adventure, have your tummy tablets at the ready. TV Watch : There's further coverage from Royal Ascot on Virgin Media One and UTV (from 1.30), and Sky Sports Golf will be hopping between the women's PGA Championship in Texas and the lads' Travelers Championship in Connecticut (from 1.0). At 8.0 you get to choose between the Lions v Argentina (TG4 and Sky Sports Action), athletics' Paris Diamond League (Virgin Media Three and BBC Three) and Shamrock Rovers v Cork City (Virgin Media Two).
