Morgan desperate to prove that 2021 was ‘no fluke’

TYRONE KEEPER Niall Morgan has strongly refuted suggestions that the County’s All-Ireland victory last year was a ‘fluke’.

The knives have been out for the Red Hands since their resounding loss to Derry in the first round of the Ulster Championship at the beginning of May, with several prominent critics intimating that their 2021 success was a one-off.

However Morgan, who was last weekend named as the Gaelic Writers’ Association Football Personality of the Year for 2021 in recognition for his crucial role in the All-Ireland champions’success last season, has jumped to the defence of his side insisting that they remained contenders for top honours. Yet he acknowledged that vast improvement was required if they were to come close to emulating their magnificent 2021 march to glory.

” I know the narrative among some journalists last year was that we won by fluke. We don’t believe that. Personally I don’t believe in luck at all, I believe you get what you deserve and you get what you work for. Derry worked hard and deserved their win and there was no luck involved and we would say the same about last year.

” That we worked hard and we got the rewards for what we done. We’re just going to have to work a bit harder in terms of our training and in terms of our application and what we’re doing skills wise. We need to return a wee bit to the basics and get them sorted because our kick-passing and fist-passing and shot-selection has been what’s letting us down this year. if you return to looking after that side of things you’re going to reap the rewards of it.”

The Edendork star accepted that the nature of the collapse to Derry at Healy Park had represented something of a rude awakening for Tyrone.

” Definitely. After we won last year we obviously didn’t take anybody for granted, but you sort of get that taste of success and you think it’s going to happen again. I suppose a bit like before that, whenever we weren’t winning you sort of think are we going to have another year like that.

” Derry had a game-plan for us, they’ve been working on the same game-plan the whole way through the year and it worked for them. It wasn’t a surprise to us how they played, we knew how they were going to play, we just couldn’t counteract it on the day. Unfortunately sometimes you have to admit that the better team won and we’ll have to work to figure out ways to play against that because there are going to be other teams who will play a similar way against us as well so it’s up to us to put our heads together and figure out where we’re going wrong and how we’re going to fix it.”

Tyrone will find out their opponents in the first round of the All-Ireland qualifiers next Monday and despite the shock loss to the Oak Leafers, Morgan maintains that the mood is still positive up at Garvaghey.

” We’ve had a great reaction in training. In years gone by after a defeat you see some boys almost, not ducking out of training, but maybe not being as positive going forward. But the reaction has been great by the crop that we have and by the management. Everybody is looking forward to our next match, getting back on the pitch and trying to right the wrongs.

” There’s no guarantee that it will definitely happen, but everyone is putting their shoulder to the wheel. And if there’s one thing you can dictate it’s how hard you work. Against Derry we didn’t work hard enough, we were outworked all over the pitch and that’s why they got their victory. That’s an easy one for us to set straight, by going out and trying our best and working hard. If that’s not good enough on the day, so be it.”
And Niall added that only a positive reaction next day out would silence the carpers keen to wallow in their downfall.

” You still want to prove yourself. Because if you do go and get beat in the next game it almost proves some people right in that we were lucky as they saw last year. That narrative could then start to run away with itself. Whereas if we can get back on track that to me would take a bit of pressure off, knowing that we can perform and we can continue down the right path. I’m not saying we’re going to do back to backs, but we have to show improvement and we have to show we’re going in the right direction. The only way to show that is by winning games.”