TIERNAN McCann was all ready to go. Injury free for months, the fittest he’d been in a couple of years, off a good club campaign in 2020. And then Conor McKenna came along.
“Typical, I wasn’t injured for three or four months, first week back and Conor McKenna I think is still learning how to tackle in Irish terms, he hit me a big dunt so I’d a bit of a dead leg in the hamstring for a couple of weeks.”
Ever-engaging, McCann is in good humour after his half-hour appearance for Tyrone at the weekend, even if it was cut short by a fairly textbook black card in stoppage time.
He’d dragged Kieran Hughes to the turf in a bid to put an early stop to Monaghan’s hunt for an equaliser, but he was 30 seconds premature.
His punishment was fairly obvious and his walk back to the bench a short one, but the whole implementation of new rules around cynicism is a road he doesn’t feel football needs to be going down.
“It’s a wee bit grey. I dunno if they’ll keep it. It’s not always black-and-white,” McCann says of the rule governing cynical fouls that deny a goalscoring chance.
“I don’t think they need to change an awful lot, we have a good game that’s going in the right place. Maybe just leave it alone a while and see how it progresses.”
Frustrated by it?
“Aye, and I think a wee bit confused too. It’s not very black and white. We had Sean Hurson come in and talk to us before one of our in-house games and he was with us 45 minutes, there were that many questions being asked.
“It’s very difficult for referees, linesmen, coaches, players and fans, and yourselves in the media. It’s very difficult to see if it’s going to stay in – hopefully not,” he smiles as the music inside gets turned up a notch.
It feels, wrongly, like McCann has been away. His grip on the number five jersey has been loosened but far from removed.
When he’s in full flight, there’s still no wing-forward in Ireland likes to be doing the chasing
The Killyclogher man completed all 210 post-lockdown minutes for his county last winter, starting and finishing their league games against Donegal and Mayo, as well as their championship exit to the Tír Chonaill men.
But then the Donegal league game was the first time he’d completed a game in well over a year, going back to the first round Ulster demolition of Antrim in 2019.
That was the summer that loosened his grip. He’d miss two games through suspension, another two through injury, and played just the final 13 minutes off the bench as they exited against Kerry in the All-Ireland semi-final.
Conor McKenna might have stunted his start to 2021 but McCann is feeling good.
“I felt last year, with the first lockdown I got myself into really good shape, the happiest I’ve been in a couple of years and felt I had a really good club campaign.
“Obviously we only had two or three county games to showcase that and being played in November time, in attritional weather.
“I’m just in a really good place now, I feel like my experience is there. I’m one of the elder players in the group now, I feel ready to go and as fit as I’ve ever been. It’s all positive.”
Everyone on the outside has an opinion on the new Tyrone. They’re trying different things, different men, different ways of operating. Some of it visible, some of it invisible.
The biggest change Tiernan McCann has noticed isn’t in Healy Park on matchdays, but around Garvaghey on nights that Tyrone are training.
“From an organisational point of view, there’s just a lot more people involved. With two men at the helm [Feargal Logan and Brian Dooher], three or four different coaches, a couple of doctors and nutritionists – in terms of the body, there’s a lot more people about, all offering their expertise.
“The fact we have the Performance Hub in Garvaghey now, that’s the main difference. It’s still football, we’re still going to Garvaghy, it’s still a lot of the same faces driving the thing forward. I suppose we’ll see more differences as the year goes on.”
The Performance Hub he refers to is the county’s new six-figure gym facility, where the walls roar ‘Championships are won here’.
Whether the tactical shift in football is any more or less demanding on players, it’s too early to tell. The plague of hamstring injuries seems more attributable to the short run-in than any increased physiological strain.
We’re always told players enjoy football more when it’s open. Do they?
“Good question. You’d need a run of games to really analyse that.
“Most defenders would probably admit they don’t like isolated space and 40 yards worth of space, a kick out in front and marking some speedster that’s gonna take you on every time.
“A couple of years ago that wasn’t the case, you would have had a low block [mass numbers] back.
“People do want to go out and play football. I know it sounds simple, but football means kicking the ball. The more kick-passes, the more scores we see, the more players will enjoy Gaelic football.
“It’s probably taken a few years but the curve is changing now. We see with hurling now, a lot of the negative press. We don’t need all these negative rules coming in to change football, I think it’ll evolve itself.
“It’s definitely in a better place.
“There’s definitely… holistically, not just with Tyrone, to beat the top teams – Dublin, or the teams that have challenged the last few years, Kerry, Mayo – they’ve gone with an approach that you have to outscore them.
“You have to scramble defence, maybe a plus one, and you really have to go and try and win the game, try and kick more scores than the other team.
“That sounds so simplistic but that’s really the template at the minute. Most teams, there has been a shift. Most of the newspapers and the media the last few weeks have been praising Ulster football because it has gone down that route, which is refreshing to hear for once.
“That would be the main shift. Tactically, most teams are playing at least four forwards up.
“They probably still have 10 and 12 working, but they’re trying to outscore the other team and kick through the lines into 1v1s. It also helps that we’ve had a good spell of weather and the games are being played in summer.
“Traditionally the National League and McKenna Cup are played in horrific conditions. That would be the main shift.”
And off he goes, smiling that Chelsea are 1-0 up on Man City, the lesser of the two evils on their way to Champions League triumph in a week where he was delighted seeing Man United beaten by Villareal in the Europa League final.
A smiling Tiernan McCann is a good thing for Tyrone football.
