It often takes a full winter of reflection before the reasons behind a botched All-Ireland defence become fully apparent, but Niall Morgan has already pinpointed Tyrone’s.
This weekend, the All-Ireland quarter-finals will go ahead without the reigning champions for the first time since 2006, when an injury-ravaged Tyrone couldn’t make it through the qualifiers. Their failures this year were more multi-layered, however.
“I think we trained three times before we went on our team holiday and then you were straight back in,” Morgan begins. “So you were always playing catch-up.
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“In hindsight, we probably would have looked at the first couple of League games and seen it as a chance to just run new faces and get plenty of training under our belt and get ready for the Championship but I suppose we went in trying to not win the League but get safe early and it almost backfired on us.
“We drew with Monaghan on a horrible night, we got a good hammering by Armagh and then we sort of gathered ourselves but we never really got that catch-up period whereas last year we all did our own training during lockdown and were all flying fit and then it was just a case of getting the football piece together.
“It stood to us whereas this year we didn't have that, for want of a better word, background of fitness that we had last year. We just didn't have the work done and it showed come the end of the year. We just weren't fit enough. We were run off the pitch by Derry.
“We were run off the pitch by Armagh and even to an extent Fermanagh outran us for large periods of that game too. I think just the footballing ability shone through on that day but it caught up with us and we paid the price.”
Yet, while they were still on the horse, Morgan retained optimism that they could jump the highest fences. But when they were paired with Armagh earlier this month in the qualifiers, he felt it was “probably the worst draw we could have got”.
“They beat us earlier in the year and they knew that they could overturn us again. You were hoping that it would come together on the day but the work wasn't in the bank and it told on us and we got caught.”
Initially, Morgan was bullish about Tyrone’s ability to withstand the drip-drip departure of seven members of their All-Ireland winning panel over the course of the close season and into the League. He’s formed a different view on that now, however.
“The experience of the lads that were going really told because we were bringing in fresh players who maybe weren't pushing on the thing just as much and maybe felt they had to do a year of experience before they really pushed things and found their feet. The likes of Tiernan McCann going was obviously a huge loss because he had so much starting minutes behind him, never mind coming on at the end of games last year to get us over the line.
“Ronan O'Neill was not only a brilliant footballer but a real leader in the team and could see things on the pitch that other people weren't seeing. Obviously Hugh Pat McGeary was a big loss in personality and player, probably would have started the first few games with the injuries that we had and might have even kept his place then.
“Obviously the other boys, Mark [Bradley] and Michael [Cassidy] and Connor McAliskey going last year even, we have lost the guts of 10 really experienced players and in hindsight looking back, it's a wonderful thing (hindsight), it definitely did affect us.”
So, a lack of fitness and reduced panel depth were key factors, according to Morgan. But as individuals they didn’t do enough either, he says, himself included.
“Neglecting the basic skills, like there wouldn’t have been the same attention to detail from my own personal side of view, and I know other players have said the same, like. It is easy to point the finger at managers and stuff, but the work that Feargal [Logan] and Brian [Dooher] have put in was over and beyond even what they did last year and you feel a serious sense that you have let them down.”
How?
“I suppose you were putting a bit of extra work on your kickouts before training and a wee bit more on your free kicks after training. Even trying to find ways around other teams in terms of kickouts and video work, you were trying to do it and you thought you were doing it, but looking back and hindsight being the wonderful thing it is then you realise it wasn’t at the same level maybe as last year.
“Last year, for example, you wouldn’t have left the training pitch until you scored maybe 10 45s in a row, whereas this year you were maybe kicking 10 and being happy with (scoring) seven or eight. You felt like you were putting in the same level of work but it just wasn’t there.
"Hindsight is the wonderful thing it is, but you just probably regret not putting in more than what you had done before to retain or at least give the All-Ireland a better shot this year.”
The accusation that they won a soft All-Ireland jars and though they couldn’t rebuff it this year, Morgan is determined to harness some energy from it going into 2023.
“Hopefully we will have a good club season now, get to regroup and get going again for next year and prove even to ourselves, we kept saying we wanted to prove it wasn’t a fluke and we probably gave everybody the opportunity to say, ‘We told you so’. So we’ll want to get back on the horse as quickly as we can and get things sorted next year.”
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