Tyrone must find some steel in a hurry

HOSTILITIES between Tyrone and Donegal in Ballybofey last Saturday rivalled everything we saw at the opposite end of the country in Tralee. Except, unlike Kerry, Donegal started and ended the fighting, and had a double scores win over their bitterest of rivals by the finish. Rory Gallagher and his team know that Tyrone are uppity about this season, and they clearly made it their business to invite a small amount of second-guessing within Mickey Harte’s dressing room. It was mission successful. Harte had his two most reliable men on the inside line for large doses of the game, but quickly advised other team managers not to prepare for Sean Cavanagh and Mattie Donnelly as a twin strike force. ‘The public at large and the people reporting on our games are getting too excited by this idea,’ he insisted. Cavanagh only managed one point from play and Donnelly was scoreless, so perhaps this is why Harte is not getting too excited himself. And while he dismisses the notion of whacking high ball into two such dangerous individuals, there’s no doubt that if Tyrone want to retain their Ulster title and battle with Dublin for an All-Ireland as well, they will need to have physical force, and not just speed and trickery available to them up front. Tomorrow, both of them are at home — Tyrone welcoming a Mayo team they always appear to have serious trouble getting their heads around, and Donegal have Monaghan. The latter will be a game of trench warfare, and everything at ground level will be brute force. It has a drawn game written all over it, and nothing new really coming out of it. Tyrone, on the other hand, should rebound and display a level of teamwork and attrition that will mark them as serious contenders for 2017. A two or three-point win should help Harte get as nervously excited as his supporters.