Gaelic Games

Feargal Logan and Brian Dooher’s double act bears fruit for Tyrone

‘We had the rub of the green at times and we needed it,’ acknowledges Dooher

Tyrone joint managers Brian Dooher and Feargal Logan lift the Sam Maguire. Photo: Ryan Byrne/Inpho

Ian O'Riordan's face
Ian O'Riordan at Croke Park
Mon Sep 13 2021 - 06:00

Hail to the chiefs.

It is a rare and special thing for joint managers to present themselves in the aftermath of an All-Ireland final victory, rarer still when they’ve just pulled such an unlikely title as this one.

In breaking down Tyrone’s key components of victory over Mayo, Feargal Logan and Brian Dooher also present themselves a perfectly symmetrical picture of calm and belief and contentment.

Tyrone do have a tradition here, Art McRory and Eugene McKenna serving as joint managers for many years, including in the All-Ireland final defeat to Dublin back in 1995, before Mickey Harte took over in 2003 and won the county’s first ever All-Ireland.

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Dooher has been here before, winning captain in 2008, a three-time winner; Logan played midfield on that losing 1995 team, the duo first coming together to manage the Tyrone Under-21 team, which won the All-Ireland in 2015.

“Pure relief is my first thought,” says Logan, “but I suppose it’s always that way after finals. Just pure relief that we got over the line, and the players dug in again with some great last ditch defending, and they came out of it as winners of the All-Ireland.

“In the immortal words of Páidí Ó Sé, a grain of rice tips the balance. It’s what you live and die for in football. You can be very sorry as a manager, when that grain of rice has gone against you, so it was small margins, but probably the goals set us up, goals win matches and we got them.

“So relief and gladness that everything that has passed is passed now, and we’ve done the business on the football field here. So just delighted, and delighted to have Brian here at my side, and all the coaching that went on with Holmsey (Collie Holmes) Peter (Donnelly) and Joe (McMahon) and Des McGuinness. It’s just outstanding.”

Relief

For Dooher, after all Tyrone endured over the last month, relief was the overriding feeling: from feeling they’d no option but to pull out of the championship, to beating the two teams they hadn’t beaten in 13 years in Kerry and Mayo.

“For the last two weeks, it was all consuming, consuming every waking minute. You don’t have much time for anything else to be honest. The players too, they put their lives on hold, that’s what they do. They committed fully to it. It wasn’t exactly a straight line, but we got there in the end.

“But that’s the position we put ourselves into, what we signed up for. It doesn’t always work out, and thankfully today it did work out for us, but you know, you have to give credit to the players.

“Probably the turning point was their penalty, once they missed the penalty, it just gave us a wee bit of a boost when we needed it. Then we ended up with Cathals’s goal which put the separation we managed to keep. The two midfielders today, credit to them they put in a massive shift.

“They’ve done it time and time again this year, we can’t ask any more of them. /[LET’S/] face it, we had the rub of the green at times and we needed it, particularly in the semi-final where we used a right bit of it. The way we tell the players is ‘don’t wait until tomorrow, do what you can today’.”

This time last year, Logan was managing his club Stewartstown in the county intermediate final loss to Greencastle; on Saturday evening he jointly managed Tyrone to an All-Ireland senior title in his first season - and only the fourth ever in the history of the county.

“/[YOU’RE/] right about that. My starting ambition anyway, without declaring to Brian, was to win one match. We managed to do that as Tyrone managers, and it just progressed from there. We’d no big plans or targets that way, we just mucked in night after night, and it was fairly up and down, but it’s ended happy in Tyrone, as All-Ireland champions. Players who have been battle hardened and committed their life cause to it are outstanding footballers, and I’m so delighted they have All-Ireland medals as a player, because it’s something special.”