Sean Cavanagh believes ‘the sight of a Dublin jersey' can inspire Tyrone to come of age

Irish Times

5 days ago

If
Tyrone
fail to beat
Dublin
in Saturday evening's
All-Ireland SFC
quarter-final, that'll be just nine wins in the championship from 21 outings since they
won the All-Ireland four years ago
.
Dig down into that poor record and it reveals three seasons that ended early: at the qualifier stage in 2022, at the quarter-final stage in 2023 when they were heavily beaten by Kerry, and at the preliminary quarter-final stage last year, when Roscommon dumped them out.
Only once have they won two championship games in a row in that period, while they were
dumped out of Division One earlier this season
.
Seán Cavanagh understands that if Tyrone lose to Dublin at Croke Park on Saturday, it's going to be another long winter.
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He is in an optimistic mood, though, when speaking at a promotion to highlight the Electric Ireland All-Ireland minor championship finals. For starters, he feels Dublin are in the same boat; needing to win to avoid the season being a failure but knowing that, if they do win, anything is then possible.
Having viewed the last few years since that 2021 All-Ireland final defeat of Mayo as 'rebuild territory', he reckons the foundations are now in place for a new era of Tyrone success.
'What a chance this is to re-announce ourselves back at the top table of football,' said Cavanagh, who won three All-Irelands in his playing days with the Red Hand County.
'I said this to the boys when I was leaving [in 2017], when Dublin beat us well, that there was an All-Ireland in this team,' he recalled. 'It almost felt that 2021, when they did win it, was the work of a seven-, eight- or nine-year period.
'A lot of those lads, the Mattie Donnellys, Petey Hartes, Conor Meyler, all those lads, Paudie Hampsey, they'd been building and had been the backbone of our 2015 All-Ireland Under-21 winning team. Kieran McGeary obviously as well.
'So I almost felt that was the pinnacle of that group, 2021. It felt like we were in a bit of rebuild territory after that and there were a lot of guys that left the year after.
'It's only really now that we feel we're kind of back where Tyrone football should be. But equally, and this kind of goes back to needing to win on Saturday evening, would beating Cavan and beating Donegal represent a great championship season for Tyrone? I don't think so.
Former Tyrone footballer Seán Cavanagh at a preview event for the Electric Ireland All-Ireland minor finals at Croke Park. Photograph: Ben Brady/Inpho
'And look, the Donegal game was brilliant, a good performance, but I think we need more this year. So where we find ourselves is that if we want to get more, then we have to take out the Dubs in Croke Park. You can flip that around very quickly and say to the lads, 'look, what an opportunity this is for that team to really go and announce themselves'.
'I think if we were to come to Croke Park and beat the Dubs, that would be as good a performance as we had in the All-Ireland in '21.'
Asked if the rebuild in Tyrone is complete, or if it will take another couple of years to fully integrate players from the All-Ireland winning Under-20 teams of 2022, 2024 and 2025, Cavanagh was again optimistic.
'I think the balance we have across the team, the age profile we have, it's really good,' said the five-time All Star. 'You have Petey Harte and Mattie Donnelly and these lads who are absolutely at the top end of their careers. The experience they can give is huge.
'We have a lovely bunch of players in the mid-to-late 20s category then. Then we have an incredible array of underage lads that are all going to drop into the mix and have dropped into the mix already. Just look at Eoin McElholm from the 20s and what he can bring.
'You get the feeling there's a big opportunity in the next few years in Tyrone to go back to being in All-Ireland semi-finals and finals, and expecting to be there.
'I think watching our near neighbours Armagh win last year and seeing where they're at at the minute, that will have stoked the fires enough for us to say, 'yeah, we have to get back there and we have the talent to get back there and we have the management to get back there'. It feels like all the building blocks are there for us to do it. It's just about time now that we have to arrive.'
That vital consistency is the final missing piece for Tyrone. Their results so far in this year's championship sums things up for them; beat Cavan, lose to Armagh, beat Donegal, lose to Mayo, beat Cavan again.
Cavanagh expects the sight of the Dublin jersey to inspire their best form.
'I think the sight of Croke Park and the sight of the Dubs and the sky blue jersey will definitely bring out whatever's in those players right now,' he said. 'As a supporter, I do feel there's a big performance in the team. I think the players all see it in that way. They'll all see it as an opportunity to bring it on Saturday night.
'Any time Tyrone has a good year, it usually takes a big game and the sight of something that will energise and excite the team to get it out of themselves. So I'm cautiously optimistic that the sight of a Dublin jersey on a Saturday night in Croke Park will do that.'