Evolving to stay ahead of the game

ULSTER SFC SEMI-FINAL: GAVIN CUMMISKEYasks Tyrone team trainer Fergal McCann whether the All-Ireland champions are better prepared this time to defend their title

IN 2004 All-Ireland champions Tyrone were shaken by the traumatic loss of Cormac McAnallen to a sudden, inexplicable, heart attack. In 2006, injury ravaged key components of a squad Mickey Harte had led to their second title in three seasons. Peter Canavan had also just retired.

With Canavan gone and two of the generation’s best forwards, Stephen O’Neill and Brian McGuigan, crocked, Tyrone made a miserable defence of Sam Maguire in what was supposedly their Omagh fortress, Healy Park. Derry provided the opposition, as they do again tomorrow in an Ulster semi-final in west Belfast.

This being Tyrone’s third defence of the highest accolade attainable in Gaelic football, they appear to have learned lessons from those previous difficult second seasons.

Fergal McCann has been team trainer since 2005. Speaking to McCann in a chaotic Citywest hotel the day after last year’s defeat of Kerry, we wanted to know how Tyrone managed to produce such raw energy, especially in players like veteran Brian Dooher and the luckless Brian McGuigan – and the other panellists who have been dogged by dodgy ankles, groins, hamstrings and knee ligaments.

McCann’s motto – that you can’t win second time around doing the things you did first time around – is fairly crucial to a group standing upon the precipice of a decade of utter domination and this despite Kerry’s success since 2000.

“I suppose you are always looking for new things but I think in 2006 when you are in the middle of it you think you were taking them as far they could go themselves,” explains McCann.

“In hindsight, you wonder whether the hunger and energy was there. All I can say is you will notice a big difference in appetite between players from 2006 to 2009. To be truthful, a big, big difference.

“Maybe the fellas themselves, with their age profiles increasing, realise how important these seasons are to them. They are making the most of it too but you never really know until the season finishes.

“Every season starts with good drive and energy but over a number of months the standards can slip a wee bit. It is about trying to suss such things out early enough to work them out.”

Back in the present tense of June football and the ultra- competitive Ulster championship, that is the primary challenge facing the Tyrone management.

The fractious encounter between Derry and Monaghan has set the tone. In fairness to Damian Cassidy’s Derry team, they are merely following a winning blueprint. Go into the fox-holes when necessary; play football when necessary. We have been assured, repeatedly, this week that football will prevail.

Football was a distant relative of the 2006 defeat to Derry that can be used as immediate motivation. Tyrone posted one point from play that day and no scores in the first half when Kevin Hughes was sent off after 17 minutes. Derry, sensing a team perhaps tiring of the constant cycle, took delight in squeezing their neighbour’s windpipe.

Next came a scrambling draw with Louth in the qualifiers, stumbling through the replay before a hardly inspiring Laois put them out of their misery on a meek 0-9 to 0-6 scoreline. (Derry, as it turned out, also made a mess of the backdoor, eventually bowing out to Longford).

The year 2007 gave further weight to Tyrone’s demise before the great renaissance that only became apparent to the general populace with the ruthless culling of Paul Caffrey’s Dublin in Seán Cavanagh’s Croke Park All-Ireland quarter-final exhibition. It kick-started a heartwarming revival.

Other, more practical, benefits have accrued in Tyrone with McGuigan, Stephen O’Neill, Colm McCullagh and Dooher all available for selection tomorrow. O’Neill started against Armagh and the other three should feature at some stage in Casement Park.

The quartet remain vital to Tyrone with McGuigan and O’Neill treated like new players considering their minor impact in 2008.

“You can’t legislate for injuries throughout the season,” says McCann. “The boys have always paid a lot of attention to their own programmes so maybe it was just unfortunate. We’re picking things up in club games. You can’t account for Brian McGuigan with the broken leg. Over the years Stevie (O’Neill) had problems with the hamstring. Brian Dooher suffered a freak incident in a training session and we lost him.

“Maybe the players looked around and thought ‘jeez, we had Peter here last year and now Stevie, Brian and Dooher are all gone.’ That can play a part.”

And yet, the 2008 success was born out of other men coming of age. The McMahon brothers, Joe and Justin, and Brian McGuigan’s younger sibling, Tommy, to name but three.

“This time last year we didn’t have all the boys out and those playing seemed to say ‘we’re the men now this year and we have to make it count’. As the summer went on the boys got a lot more confident and kept senior players, who would have made the team in other years, out of it. That was discussed last year. They decided to drive on.”

So, Tyrone are simmering nicely with the likes of Dooher or O’Neill not expected to peak until the autumn anyway. It also helps that Derry are in crisis.

“Somebody can’t just break somebody else’s jaw and then come into the dressingroom and say ‘right boys, tea and buns for everyone’,” Derry chairman Seamus McCloy remarked recently after the promising James Kielt’s jaw was broken, allegedly, by fellow panellist James Conway in a club match. Conway has been suspended pending an investigation.

There was a suggestion his fellow Ballinderry players were unhappy but Kevin McGuckin, Niall McCusker and Enda Muldoon have kept their opinions private. Anyway, Muldoon, who scored 1-3 in the 2006 meeting, is out with a broken foot, joining Patsy Bradley and Paul Cartin on the injury list, while captain Fergal Doherty and Brian Mullan are serving four-week suspensions for their indiscretions in the win over Monaghan.

Derry come into this high-octane derby on a self-inflicted low ebb, all the more reason for Mickey Harte to be careful not to provide any additional motivation.

Harte had no problem with Derry’s win over Monaghan as a spectacle because Harte is in the same business.

“Damian Cassidy seemed quite content with what happened against Monaghan,” said Tyrone’s manager. “He emphasised it was all about getting a result. I dare say if they were in a position to play pretty football along with that, they would be capable of doing that too.

“They feel that it’s too long since they won an Ulster title so I think they will again be more focused on the result than the performance in terms of entertainment. Damian is not in the business of entertaining – he’s in the business of winning.”

Tyrone’s winning formula has multiple facets. Primarily it is their ability to change shape when the moment demands. Mickey Harte looked at the ‘total football’ of the Dutch and modified, nay, perfected it to Gaelic football.

“Of course we have to evolve,” McCann re-emphasises. “Thank God the leaders are there and they are moving it on but there are others there now who realise we really do have to make hay, put the shoulder to the wheel, and see where it takes us.”