MALACHY O’Rourke is about to throw himself into the whirlwind that is the Tyrone club championship as he begins the process of building a team capable of scaling gaelic football’s heights once again.
The notoriously competitive Red Hand championships are currently in full swing, with quarter-final ties coming up next weekend, giving the new Tyrone boss the perfect opportunity to survey the talent available to him.
O’Rourke admits that he’s fortunate to have an abundance of high-quality footballers not only in the current squad but coming through the under-age ranks, with the county having won two of the last three All-Ireland U20 titles.
“There’s no doubt, there is already a strong panel there. But there’s a lot of really good players coming through. I’d be wrong not to acknowledge the great work that’s being carried out by clubs first of all, but also by schools in the county,” he said.
“It was tough on my mum and dad. I knew I was self-destructing. And I also knew the next phase of that, if I had carried on, it was not being here. I was in a very dark place...” - the life and times of Caolan Mooney
Cookstown joint-manager Jason Quinn doesn’t underestimate the challenge of Four Masters in the Ulster semi-final
“Then obviously the underage set-up in the county who have brought those players through. It’s my job now to try to develop them further, and get the more experienced players working really hard.
“But it is a challenge, it’s alright having the talent but that doesn’t bring you that far. All those people have a really good attitude.
“It’s important that everybody is singing off the same hymn sheet, that they see there’s an awful lot of work to be done, and working really hard as a group to really make progress, and I suppose that’s the ultimate aim.”
The 31 clubs comprising the Intermediate and Junior grades currently account for just two members of the county squad, and that apparent dependence on senior clubs is something that O’Rourke intends to address.
“Sometimes you can find jewels where people haven’t looked before and wouldn’t expect to find.
“So no doubt we’ll be trawling the county, we’ll be looking at clubs at all the different levels and see what players are there, because as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter where a player is from, what previous he has.
“We have a clean slate and we’re looking to see what are the best players going forward.”
The Tyrone squad has suffered a high rate of departures in recent seasons, with a number of high-profile players opting out, some citing a lack of game time as the reason.
While O’Rourke was non-committal on the possibility of attracting some of those players back into the fold, he insisted that the door remains open.
“It will be very open-ended. We’re not going in with any closed opinions.
“The panel that was there last year was a good panel full of good players, committed players.
“There’s a lot of younger players coming through as well.
“But there are a number of players who have stepped away, for whatever reason, so it’s a case of looking at what players are in the county.
“But players have to make that decision whether to commit, and the one thing you need at county level is a very high level of commitment and players who are going to invest completely in every area of preparation.
“So it will be a case of looking around the county, watching the championship games, seeing what the panel was last year, and then going about compiling a panel.”
The Malachy O’Rourke era is just days old, but already expectations have risen, and with it the pressure on the new man to deliver.
But the former Fermanagh and Monaghan manager is ready for the challenge, fresh, energised and raring to go following five years away from the inter-county scene.
“Well I suppose you’ve different challenges everywhere you go, and there’s a certain level of expectation in different counties but there’s no doubt with I suppose the size of the county, the resources and the playing population and then the success there has been at senior and underage level, there probably is a lot of expectation – but that’s great as well.
“That’s one of the things that would obviously attract you to the job, because you want to be going in somewhere you think there’s a great chance of success.
“But it does bring challenges as well, look there’s a certain amount of pressure in all these jobs, and you wouldn’t be doing them if you’re afraid of that.
“The most pressure I would find, is that I would put it on myself anyway.
“We know there’s a serious bit of work to do but as I keep on saying, that’s the challenge in front of us.”
