Doctor can do little wrong for Tyrone

Brian Dooher's day job as a vet makes him a prime target for television people looking for a new angle to the tired format of GAA pre-match interviews and features. You know the sort of thing. Footballer or hurler with an interesting sideline as a taxidermist or beautician gets the full five-star treatment to promote the next big game.

And so it came to pass that on at least two different programmes last Friday night, the Tyrone half forward was filmed at work with his arm up the backside of a rather bemused horse. Midway through the second half of Sunday's tempestuous meeting between Tyrone and Derry, Dooher put the same fist to a slightly different use as he gestured exuberantly at Eamonn Coleman, who was exiting the field after one of those little cameos with match officials that have become his trademark. Welcome to Ulster football's most enduring and compelling soap opera.

The advance choice of Dooher by the television producers proved to be an inspired piece of casting. In Tyrone's two games to date this summer he has buzzed and flitted around with considerable vigour and his return to something approaching the form that lit up the championship in 1996 is symbolic of the broader resurgence of Tyrone as a unit.

Last Sunday Dooher performed as a covering player to snuff out the threat of Derry full forward Enda Muldoon but was also prevailed upon to make one lung-busting run after another to supplement the attacking pivots of Stephen O'Neill and Ger Cavlan. The fact that one such run paid off so handsomely with Tyrone's second and decisive goal made his tremendous work-rate all the more worthwhile.

We can be sure too that everything Dooher said in the course of the interviews that followed those never-to-be-forgotten man and horse shots had been carefully prepared and approved beforehand. When Art McRory and Eugene McKenna send their players out over the sandbags to face the media these days they tend to make sure they are resolutely on message.

Brian Dooher did not let them down last Friday and made all the right noises about Derry being a side that Tyrone respected and feared. There was no way their lacklustre performance against Antrim could be taken seriously, he opined. He even found time to lob back the role of favourites that had been cleverly volleyed Tyrone's way by a succession of Derry heads over the previous few days. Art and Eugene could only have been delighted because Tyrone-Derry has now become a war of attrition fought as much in the mind as on the field.

They are also occasions to be endured rather than enjoyed, the GAA equivalent of a preseason friendly or a game of ice hockey. The benchmark for the level of intensity that now surrounds meetings between the counties was set in 1995 when Tyrone survived two dismissals to win by a point in a breathless climax. Last Sunday's game never threatened to match that encounter for sheer scabrous intent but with Paddy Russell's weak and indecisive refereeing performance it came close on occasions.

Tyrone's emergence from the shadows was intimately linked to Cormac McAnallen's increasing dominance over Anthony Tohill at midfield. The under-21 captain further franked his credentials as the answer to the midfield deficiencies which have dogged his county for a decade.

The value of this dominating presence in the middle of the field to a county which has never wanted for dogged defenders and talented scoring forwards is inestimable.

Both of those departments impressed again last Sunday. The entire full-back line that started against Armagh was replaced and the new men held the much-vaunted Enda Muldoon to one score from play. Further forward there is a joyful exuberance to the play of men like Stephen O'Neill and Eoin Mulligan.

Without the baggage of 1995 and 1996 these graduates from the All-Ireland minor and under-21 sides approach everything they do like winners. And when it all comes together, Tyrone look a genuine match for anyone in the country.

The circumstances of this are all the more remarkable when an assessment of Peter Canavan's contribution is factored in. There is nobody in the county or beyond who could have imagined Tyrone would see off last year's Ulster champions and National League winners in successive games without Canavan scoring from play. In the 1995-96 run of

back-to-back provincial titles such a seemingly peripheral influence for the full forward would have been unthinkable.

But it is quite clear that the focus has changed to suit Canavan. He is no longer the inevitable target and focus for every attack and during last Sunday's game high ball from midfield was aimed time and again at Cavlan rather than Canavan. Peter now comes much deeper, hoping to pull some strings with the breaking ball he picks up around the congested central area.

His influence, though, still runs right through this team. Any other player would probably have been called ashore during the course of last Sunday's rather muted performance, but such a move would be a psychological step too far for Tyrone.

Canavan has clearly made a conscious decision to hang on for just as long as his body and football brain will allow in the hope that he can catch this Tyrone wave of young talent and expanded horizons. On the basis of what we have seen so far this summer his judgment might just be rewarded a little further down the line.