Tyrone are ‘a work in progress’-Dooher

WHILE pleased to see his team get back to winning ways after accounting for Fermanagh by seven points last week, Tyrone joint manager Brian Dooher acknowledged that they were still very much ‘a work in progress’.

The Red Hands hadn’t played a competitive match for six months by the time they took to the field for last Wednesday night’s McKenna Cup opener, so it was understandable that the new look line-up struggled for cohesion, certainly in the early stages.

Half a dozen rookies (Nathan McCarron, Cormac Quinn, Niall Devlin, Dalaigh Jones, Ryan Jones, and Conor Cush) all put in decent shifts on their county debuts, an aspect of the evening which pleased Dooher.

“ Those boys have earned their gametime. They have come in and trained hard over the last five or six weeks so they were fully deserving of the opportunity and each and everyone of them acquitted themselves very well I thought. It’s something they can be proud of.”

After a laboured opening thirty minutes, Tyrone eventually clicked through the gears to run out convincing victors, though Dooher was disappointed at the nature of the way they conceded the late consolation goal to Fermanagh.

“ It took a while to settle into the game but they did that eventually as it went on and played some good football.

“ We ran up a good score and were probably disappointed that we gave away a poor goal at the end. It was good Fermanagh play, they won the kickout and hit the long ball in with runners off it. The ball was then in the back of our net before you even had time to look up.

“ We were slow at the start to get scores. Our play was a bit laboured but once we got going we started to string the passes together and had that bit more movement. We were able to keep the scoreboard ticking over.”

Unlike last season when Tyrone came into the McKenna Cup on the back of their team holiday in Florida as reward for their All-Ireland heroics, this year’s preparations have been more routine, bnut Dooher maintains that they will be eying improvement as the weeks go on.

“ This time last year we came back from a holiday and got well trounced (by Cavan). This time we have had a bit more training done but we under no illusions that while it was nice to get a win in our first game we are definitely a work in progress.

“ Nothing replaces matches. We hadn’t played a competitive game in six months. So there was a bit of rustiness and players getting used to playing together again.

“ It’s going to take a bit of time but hopefully it will come together. We will obviously have to improve a lot for next week but we will go back and look at the video and see what we can improve on. We will gather our thoughts and move forward.”