All-Ireland SFC round-robin Group Two: Tyrone v Armagh (Saturday, 7pm, Healy Park, live on RTÉ2)
LIKE most things concocted in the previous decade, Cathal McShane at full-forward was all about Dublin.
In early 2015, the Owen Roes youngster was still predominantly with the U21 side that would win an All-Ireland under Feargal Logan, Brian Dooher and Peter Canavan when he was thrown in as a late replacement before a league game with the Dubs in Croke Park.
Harte and Gavin Devlin felt they’d spied a physical chink in Dublin’s full-back armoury, and wanted to test it. The experiment lasted 35 minutes before Mark Bradley came on and they tried something different.
After failing to discommode Jim Gavin’s men with their running style, particularly beyond the first stanza of the 2018 All-Ireland final, the continued evolution was almost forced upon them again.
They wanted to kick the ball more but in 2019 they had lost some of what they wanted to kick it to.
Mark Bradley was taking the year out to do a PGCE in Liverpool. Connor McAliskey had dislocated his ankle on club duty and would miss the season.
Darren McCurry had returned after opting out in 2018, when he watched them reach the All-Ireland final only to fall well short of the Dubs again.
But it was physicality that Harte was looking for inside.
Newly-appointed attacking coach Stephen O’Neill set about manufacturing a proper full-forward out of McShane instead. He had played a small bit there but was seen more as a midfielder then.
They only broke it out of the box when went to Croke Park in round six. McShane gave Michael Fitzsimons his fill in a three-point win. The manner of it propelled their season towards the last four of the All-Ireland series.
Three months later, they led a shell-shocked Kerry by four points. McShane and Mattie Donnelly had five between them from play.
Their attacking play in that first-half was majestic. Virtually every time Tyrone got the ball to halfway, they looked to kick it. McShane had Jason Foley bamboozled.
They bore all the hallmarks of O’Neill’s influence on their coaching. He’s always tried to synchronise the timing of the run and the delivery so that the forward would be collecting possession heading towards the middle of the goal, rather than away from it.
Tyrone ran the same four attacking calls on repeat that year, based on which area of the field possession was coming through.
McShane and Donnelly knew what kick pass was coming long before it came. That allowed them to tailor their movement accordingly.
Kerry stayed standing until the first bell and got themselves sorted, with Stephen O’Brien’s goal the key score in a turnaround victory.
Watching from the sideline for the first 60 minutes that day was Darren McCurry.
He’d been a substitute in their Ulster campaign and then got back in for the qualifier win over Longford. But his role was deeper, ahead of McShane, a link-man of sorts.
McCurry started the next five and then came on in the Super 8s dead-rubber against the Dubs, but when the call came from Harte to his hotel room at Johnstone House that he was being dropped for the Kerry game, it didn’t come as a huge surprise to him or anyone else.
After his flirtation with the AFL, McShane made his first start of 2020 in Galway. It was there, 42 minutes in, that he suffered the catastrophic leg injury which blew a gaping hole in such a promising career.
He recovered in time to impact massively off the bench when they won their All-Ireland the following summer. His 1-3 off the bench against Kerry and fisted goal in the final against Mayo were of huge significance.
But by then, McCurry was the man.
He had been taken off with 20 minutes to go in Mickey Harte’s last championship game as manager, even though they were chasing Donegal hard and he had two points from play that sodden afternoon.
Feargal Logan and Brian Dooher didn’t pick him for their first league game against Donegal the following spring.
Tyrone have played 28 league and championship games since. McCurry has started 27 of them, and come on as a half-time sub for McShane in the other.
Dazzler, as he calls himself, won an Allstar and man-of-the-match in the All-Ireland final in 2021. He’s always maintained that he can only be the player he is when he feels those around him have the confidence in him that he has in himself.
Logan and Dooher have given him that and been rewarded.
But that has effectively shut the door on McShane.
One of Harte’s fears with McCurry was that he wasn’t good enough in the air, that he couldn’t win the ball well enough inside. He went away and worked on that, and improved to the point where he’s a supremely good ball-winner now.
In that regard, he’s caught up on McShane. And in terms of finishing, McCurry has overtaken the Leckpatrick man.
Why not play both of them?
The feeling among the initiated is that they’re too similar.
McCurry and McShane both want to occupy the same position, hovering right in front of goal.
They both want to make the same run into the same area, the one McShane had such joy in during his own Allstar year, to win the same ball.
The reason they want to win that ball is because they want to be the one to score.
They both want to be the man, which is no bad trait in an inside-forward, unless you have two of them the same.
Team-mates would say that Mattie Donnelly was a huge factor in McShane’s success in 2019, because he was willing to make the hard, unselfish runs to show into other areas.
He and Darragh Canavan fulfil similar roles at present around McCurry.
Since McShane’s injury in 2020, he and McCurry have played 70 minutes together just three times.
The impact of trying to shoehorn them both in was notable in this year’s league. McShane looked outstanding in January, so sharp playing inside on his own while McCurry was on honeymoon. He kicked five points from play against Derry in the McKenna Cup.
Against Roscommon, playing into a gale, he was inside. He touched the ball four times in the first half, given no service at all. McCurry replaced him at the break.
When they faced Donegal a week later, McShane played mostly on the 45. Against Galway and Mayo, they interchanged.
But that meant McCurry spending large periods of the game playing in a deep role. One of the country’s most prolific forwards of recent seasons, he spent most of the first-half of the league game in Salthill 60 yards from goal.
McShane had chances in Mayo during a bright Tyrone start but his finishing and decision-making were off-key. Mattie Donnelly came on for him after 50 minutes and kept his place the following week, turning in a man-of-the-match performance against Kerry.
Cathal McShane hasn’t had a minute of football since.
It’s hard to see how he gets back into a team that contains Darren McCurry.
The prized space in front of goal just ain’t big enough for the two of them.
McCurry and McShane since 2019
Darren McCurry
Games played: 51
Starts: 42
Sub appearances: 9
Scored: 6-170 (1-100 dead balls)
Championship record: 21 games, 16 starts, 2-78 scored
Cathal McShane
Games played: 36
Starts: 27
Sub appearances: 9
Scored: 7-90 (0-49 dead balls)
Championship record: 13 games, 7 starts, 5-62 scored
McCurry and McShane alongside each other
Minutes: 1,186
Both started: 17
Total games together: 35
McCurry scored: 2-58 (0-39f)
McShane scored: 4-46 (0-30f)
