Seanie making the most of his chance to shine

SEANIE O’Donnell has wasted no time in grasping his opportunity in the Tyrone Senior Intercounty set-up.

One of the stars of Tyrone U20’s memorable run to All-Ireland honours in 2022, O’Donnell was parachuted into the senior panel midway through last season and it wasn’t long before he was entrusted with an impact role on Championship match-day.

He came on as a sub in All-Ireland group stage clashes against Westmeath and Galway, and he also saw game-time late on in a forgettable day out in Croke Park against Kerry in the last eight.

In that sense he was just dipping his toes into the senior intercounty waters, but he’s played a much more prominent role so far this season, starting six of Tyrone’s seven league matches.

The Trillick youngster isn’t making any assumptions that this is the way it’s going to be from now on, especially with some injured stalwarts coming back into the picture in recent weeks.

“I’m basically taking it training session by training session and doing as much as I can to get a jersey.

“There’s definitely no set places on the team, a lot of lads are playing well and there’s others still waiting to come back from injury. But that’s what you want, you want everyone fit and ready and competitive training sessions to help push the team on as much as we can.”

Tyrone won the Ulster Championship in 2021 with victory over Monaghan in Croke Park en route to claiming a fourth ever All-Ireland title for the county. But it certainly hasn’t been plain-sailing in the meantime, bowing out of the provincial race ahead of schedule in the last two seasons against Monaghan and Derry respectively.

The championship can be something of a slow burner, especially with the introduction of the new group stages, but Tyrone would still love to get their hands on another provincial title. They get their campaign underway with an away trip to preliminary round victors Cavan this Sunday afternoon and O’Donnell says that anything other than a win would be an underachievement.

“We know ourselves that we should’ve done better in Ulster in the last couple of years. Any Tyrone team on any given day expects to win, that’s the mentality we have and we’re working hard to get ourselves right in time for the championship.”

On that note, Tyrone have had a three-week gap in preparation for Sunday, a welcome period in which to reset following a bruising beating at the hands of Dublin on the final weekend of the league.

“We’ll have had three weeks to prepare for the game, it’s not exactly a break but it’ll give us a bit of time to focus and hopefully get injuries cleared up. We’ll see where it takes us and we’ll be ready to go.”

Seanie is one of four Trillick lads on the panel at present alongside newcomers Ciarán Daly and Liam Gray and the vastly experienced Mattie Donnelly, back in contention having recuperated from a long-term injury. They had a memorable 2023 on the club front and Seanie is glad they’re also involved with Tyrone.

“Definitely, it’s always nice to play with your clubmates at county level. Ciarán has been playing well while Liam was unfortunate with a hand injury at the start of the year.

“It’s great to see Mattie back getting a bit of game-time as well. It shows everyone what Mattie is all about as a person and player, he’s done so much work off the field to get himself ready to get back on it, it’s a credit to him.”