In all probability, Mickey Harte just about has in his hands one of the very few contenders for the All-Ireland. Tyrone are a good distance back but they're making up ground at a decent rate. Lifting the Division Two trophy was an important step in making them more than just talking horses.
“You can play all the good football you want but people will reflect and say, ‘What did you win in terms of trophies?’ That’s the way it has been with Tyrone in the last few seasons anyway. We have had good runs and got to semi-finials but where has the title been?
"The Allianz League is a league of substance and Division Two was a very difficult challenge this season because there was so many Ulster teams, number one.
“And in our case we had to go away to Laois and away to Galway and away to Meath and that didn’t look any way appetising at the start of the season. So it was a case of putting all that behind us and that got us where we are.
No easy task
“We would have to believe. We believe we are good enough to be in the top company, of course we are. But you have to prove that time and time again. We have done well so far, we have the Ulster Championship to deal with in the first place and before we are thinking of anybody who might arrive at this scene, we have to go to Celtic Park and get a result, which will be no easy task for us.”
As for Terry Hyland, he conceded that his Cavan team went into their shells a little.
They’re trying to change the way they play and to move the ball quicker from back to front. Tyrone were able to do that, but then Tyrone have been able to do it for a while now.
“Yeah, that’s probably been their gameplan for a long number of years. They haven’t changed it for seven, eight, nine years so they’re probably more adept at doing that and their players are more used to coming into the system.
Young players
“From a positive point of view, we had a lot of young players out there today, their first time at Croke Park and I thought some of them acquitted themselves quite well.
“It was a bit like tennis in one sense, whoever was serving – when we had the ball Tyrone were dropping back, and vice-versa.
“The pattern of the game caused that more than anything else. I think that maybe we didn’t push enough up when they dropped back and maybe we did that more in the second half.
“We battled hard but we made mistakes and that’s ultimately what cost us.
“In transition we gave away three or four scores and, look, it gives us something to work on but we’re probably a little bit disappointed we weren’t closer in the end.”
