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Irish Times
25-06-2025
- Sport
- Irish Times
Sean Cavanagh believes ‘the sight of a Dublin jersey' can inspire Tyrone to come of age
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. READ MORE 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.'
Belfast Telegraph
28-04-2025
- Sport
- Belfast Telegraph
Tyrone boss Malachy O'Rourke hails Red Hands' fighting spirit in slender Armagh defeat: ‘We wanted the boys to go for it'
The Red Hand County pushed Armagh right to the very brink and were winning the game with just a couple of minutes to go only for Stefan Campbell and Rory Grugan to score in quick succession and book the Orchard men their spot in the provincial Final. Not that any of the players will want to hear it right now, but Tyrone's performance in the Semi-Final is the first concrete indication that things are back on the right track in the O'Neill County. Since lifting the All-Ireland in 2021, the side have struggled to get any form of consistency and couldn't even string more than two wins together before capitulating again. They would have games where flashes of brilliance and potential raise your hopes and make you dare to believe in them once more only to then watch them falter at the next hurdle. Under new management, things initially didn't look like they were getting better – consecutive defeats to Mayo, Armagh and Kerry in the League dampened the mood around this team and fans started to think that 2025 will be the same old story once again. What followed was an impressive draw against last year's All-Ireland Finalists Galway and then three brilliant wins against Donegal, Dublin and Cavan in quick succession. With the All-Ireland champions waiting for them in Ulster, now was the time to show if they really were contenders or not – and they proved that they were. Tyrone manager Malachy O'Rourke couldn't hide his disappointment after the match, but he also couldn't hide his satisfaction after watching his team leave everything on the pitch. 'Yeah, that's what we wanted. We wanted the boys to go for it, not to be passive and not to be sort of afraid to lose,' explained the Ballygawley man. 'We wanted to go and attack the game. Probably in the first-half, we were a wee bit passive. I thought in the second-half, at that period when we went behind, we did start to really go at Armagh. 'In fairness to them, they showed their quality, they showed why they're All-Ireland champions over the way they finished the game. We may be a wee bit disappointed in that. But, you know, at least that's the good thing – we live to fight another day. 'That's the Ulster Championship gone, but we have a go at the All-Ireland series and we look forward to that.' There are a lot of reasons for O'Rourke to be positive, even just with the amount of talent that is returning to the squad. Darragh Canavan was only back from a hamstring injury and clearly struggling but still managed to score four points, while Darren McCurry was exceptional, kicking an unbelievable 10 points, including some individual pieces of magic. Eoin McElholm caught everybody's eye on Wednesday when he starred for the Under-20 team against Derry, scoring a solo goal that saw him beat some defenders twice before hammering it home. His introduction as a substitute immediately lit a fire in the Red Hand attack, and when you consider that Mattie Donnelly didn't even feature on Saturday because of a bug, you can see how this team can be even better. Former county captain Padraig Hampsey made his long-awaited return to the team, coming off the bench to make his first appearance in 2025, and the white and red defence instantly looked more formidable with his presence behind them. None of this will make defeat any easier to take, but it will turn the dimmer light up for the future because if they can continue to reach that level of performance and get all of their star men back in action, then nobody will want to face Tyrone.
