Dooher in positive mood ahead of Armagh tie

NINE players were handed their Tyrone senior debuts as they fell to a narrow defeat to Donegal in Sunday’s McKenna Cup season-opener at a frosty and foggy O’Neill’s Healy Park.

There were plenty of positives to extract from the performance as Tyrone showed some real bite and urgency in the second-half after taking quite some time to get to grips with the contest, eventually falling short on a scoreline of 0-15 to 1-10.

Seasons aren’t won and lost in the McKenna Cup, but joint-manager Brian Dooher was pleased by the way the new boys conducted themselves in their first time taking to the field as Tyrone senior intercounty footballers.

“By and large they all came in and acquitted themselves very well, we couldn’t fault them for endeavour and effort, and there were some great performances from new lads. We’ll take that away and we’ll build on it against Armagh on Wednesday.”

The story of the game was Tyrone’s sluggish start and subsequent second-half comeback. Donegal, under the stewardship of Jim McGuinness, came out all guns blazing and could’ve put the game to bed in the first-half only for some slackness in front of goal. Tyrone were fortunate in that respect and they grabbed the nettle in the second-half with a much improved showing.

Commenting on the bi-polar nature of their performance, Dooher said, “There were some good points, but we just can’t overlook the negatives in the first half, take a bit of learning from them, and see what we can do to address that sort of thing, because to give teams a 35-minute head start on you, you’re not going to go far.”

While Brian Dooher was disappointed that Tyrone looked off the pace in the first-half, he insisted that’s only the case because he knows the capabilities of the players at his disposal.

They regrouped at half-time having fallen to a five-point deficit and were a side transformed after the break, putting it up to Donegal in every sector. Indeed, they can count themsevles as somewhat unfortunate that they didn’t get something from the game.

Dooher said, “Maybe we were expecting a wee bit too much, but these boys, we have seen them in training, and they’re well capable, and they showed in the second half what they can do.

“Maybe they did need that bit of time together under pressure to cope. Maybe that’s what it was, it’s hard to tell.

“But we know what these boys are capable of, that’s why they’re in the panel, and in the second half they showed what they’re capable of, and went out and delivered it.”

While Seanie O’Donnell wasn’t among the nine debut players who saw game-time against Donegal, it is only his second year on the panel and he’s already bringing his array of skills to proceedings, setting up a second-half goal with a brilliant dummy and pass across the square.

Dooher commented, “We saw Seanie in the panel last year, he came on in a lot of matches, and we know the value that he adds, and the club season he has had has been phenomenal, he got better as the season went on. We could see glimpses of that coming in, and we look forward to seeing more of it.”

Dooher also confirmed that another Trillick man, Liam Gray, broke his finger in the warm-up. Tyrone have a number of injury problems to contend with only a matter of weeks out from the commencing of another Division One campaign, but Dooher is hopeful that the overall picture will start to improve in short notice.

“We have a lot of injuries coming out of the club season, and we’re working through a lot of boys coming back. Hopefully we’ll see a lot of boys back on the training field over the next week or two, it’s just a work in progress from everybody. That’s what we had today, that’s our panel of fit players that we have training for us, and it was the best panel we could put out today.

“We evaluate that every day before we go out, and hopefully we’ll have more and more of our players back and make it more competitive as we go along.”

Next up is Armagh on Wednesday night in Tyrone’s second and final group stage encounter with a place in the semi-final up for grabs.

“You want to get as many competitive games as possible, so we have to regroup, get the bodies recovered and get ready to go on Wednesday night, and hopefully start from where we left off at.”