{"id":499920,"date":"2026-06-14T23:32:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T23:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/499920\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T23:32:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T23:32:12","slug":"morgan-drew-on-sexton-advice-to-get-tyrone-over-the-line-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/499920\/","title":{"rendered":"Morgan drew on Sexton advice to get Tyrone over the line"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tyrone goalkeeper Niall Morgan had many thoughts going through his mind before kicking the winning score against Mayo, not least his late miss against Armagh in the Ulster Championship, and some words of advice from Johnny Sexton.<\/p>\n

In what was a see-saw encounter at Healy Park, Morgan drilled over a 69th-minute two-point free to send the Red Hand into the All-Ireland quarter-finals<\/a> in a fortnight’s time.<\/p>\n

A marked contrast then to what transpired at the Athletic Grounds in April when the Tyrone custodian saw his 45′ to level the game in extra-time drift wide.<\/p>\n

Morgan, speaking on The Sunday Game Live, revealed his emotions as he prepared to take another pressure kick.<\/p>\n

“Going up I was thinking about eight weeks ago against Armagh and the chance to equalise at the end and I was just thinking ‘don’t do it again’,” he revealed.<\/p>\n

“But to be honest it probably makes it a bit easier for a two-pointer to actually win the game and thankfully I settled my nerves and Darren McCurry just gave me the look beforehand and said just settle, relax.<\/p>\n

“Against Armagh I said afterwards \u2018I don’t know why I rushed it so much’ because the time was basically up, it was basically the last kick and I just regretted after not saying take your time and get into the moment.”<\/p>\n

He also outlined some words of advice from the former Ireland rugby out-half that came into his head.<\/p>\n

“We were over at the campus at Easter and we actually met with Johnny Sexton and he just said about settling down, going through your routine, getting your breathing sorted and just all the wee things are going through your head.<\/p>\n

“You\u2019re just glad that you get to score it for a change.”<\/p>\n

\"Tyrone
\nMoran and Michael McKernan savour the taste of victory in Omagh<\/p>\n

Morgan will be 35 in July and has spent over a dozen years between the posts for his county. He still believes in his own ability but is also acutely aware that his place at No 1 should not be taken for granted.<\/p>\n

“I probably got into a massive comfort zone over a number of years because I could kick the ball so far,” he added.<\/p>\n

“As you get older and you get into your mid-30s, you start to think maybe it is time to change things and go with a younger keeper. To be fair, Brian (Dooher) and Fergal (Logan) really backed me. Malachy (O’Rourke), when he came in, did ask the questions of me and probably I didn’t react in the best way and probably found that tough because I’ve always been number one for the last number of years.<\/p>\n

“So I had to dig deep. I think I’m coming back into a bit form but I’m still not there yet, there’s still a lot of work to do.”<\/p>\n

It’s now two wins on the bounce for Tyrone, with Morgan happy with the upturn after a less-than-impressive league campaign and then that loss to Armagh.<\/p>\n

“The last couple of games we really brought a bit of performance to it,” the summation.<\/p>\n

“I think whene Tyrone drew Mayo, everybody’s mouths were watering, because no matter when we play each other we dish up a good game. We’ve come out the right side of it by the bare minimum and on another day Mayo comes out the right side of it so we’re not going to get carried away.<\/p>\n

“Thankfully we’ve got a week now for a bit of a break. There’s some tasty teams in the draw for next weekend so we’re thankful we’re not in it. But one of them is going to be coming at us the week after and we’re going to have to be ready for it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tyrone goalkeeper Niall Morgan had many thoughts going through his mind before kicking the winning score against Mayo,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-499920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}