Never write off Tyrone, I know for a fact they feed off that
Meath beat Donegal in Letterkenny last Saturday after an openingday loss to Dublin.
And Royal County boss Davy Nelson has named an unchanged starting XV, as Meath meet Galway for the first time since last year’s TG4 All-Ireland SFC quarter-final.
Cork, who host Dublin at Páirc Uí Rinn on Monday, are unbeaten after beating Mayo and drawing with Waterford.
Manager Shane Ronayne has made two changes to the team that started the Déise stalemate, with Sarah Leahy and captain
Máire O’Callaghan coming in for Eimear Meaney and Amy Ring.
Dublin make one change from the team that lost to Galway, with Martha Byrne in for Róisín Baker in defence.
Kerry, one of two teams with a 100 per cent record, host bottom side Donegal in Tralee (12pm) and make no fewer than eight changes for the fixture at Austin Stack Park.
Kayleigh Cronin, Aoife Dillane, Ciara McCarthy, Mary O’Connell, Patrice Diggin, Anna Galvin, Rachel Dwyer and Louise Ní Mhuircheartaigh are all handed starts, as Eilís Lynch, Ciara Murphy, Niamh Broderick, Lorraine Scanlon, Caoimhe Evans, Niamh Ní Chonchúir, Hannah O’Donoghue and Erica McGlynn drop out.
Donegal replace Katie Dowds and Susanne White with Niamh Carr and Cait Gillespie.
Waterford and Mayo, who are pointless so far, meet in Dungarvan tomorrow (2pm).
FOR THE vast majority of my career, I was obsessed with winning an All-Ireland.
To win just once, as The Saw Doctors used to sing.
You think one would be incredible, and you’d be happy for life.
Then you win, and everything changes ...
A solitary All-Ireland medal doesn’t carry the weight that you thought it did.
I’ve been in Dublin a few times and mixed with Dublin players of recent times, or Kerry and Tyrone players from the noughties.
They have medals falling out of their pockets, All Stars too.
You’d be afraid to mention your wee Celtic Cross in that company.
There’s always another level. That’s why even the greatest have regrets. Nobody wins every final. We all look back with regret on the ones that got away.
If I’m honest with myself, I think my CV is decent — both with Donegal and Gaoth Dobhair. But not backing up what was won still nags at me.
We had the chance with Donegal in 2014, taking down Dublin in the semi-finals, but we still fell short.
Same with the club. We tried hard, really hard, but we never retained the Donegal title, never backed up our Ulster crown.
I dreamed so much about success but got it completely wrong. I thought it sates you. Not a bit of it. It just makes you want more and more and, when you fall short, it hurts. Maybe the best way of describing it is living near a mountain and looking up at it every morning. Getting it into your head that you’re going to climb it. Eventually, you do but, when the cloud cover clears, you realise that there’s another higher peak beside it.
We worked so hard to get to the summit in 2012. Worked ourselves to the bone.
Then we realised that we had to work even harder once we’d got there. I have to admit that I found that disheartening.
That’s the reality of top level sport, though.You have to constantly challenge yourself and keep pushing on.
Won
Why am I going over this ground? It’s because I’ve been thinking about Tyrone and where they’re at.
They won an All-Ireland that no-one saw coming in 2021.
What did it do to them? Did a fair amount of them figure their work was done, they’d achieved what they wanted?
I’m pretty sure they’d deny that’s the case but then you look at the amount of lads that have left the set-up, you consider their pathetic Championship last year and their inset) (above, two crushing defeats in the McKenna Cup final and in the League against Roscommon in the last couple of weeks.
With the players that walked away, you can argue that they weren’t first choices.
But all of them used to feature at different times and, when you lose so many from a squad, it does leave a void.
It can be dangerous too in giving voice to the notion that county football doesn’t have to be the be-all and end-all.
What impressed me most about Tyrone in 2021 wasn’t just the way they played — which was really impressive.
What stood out even more than that was their attitude and how they approached the semi-final and final.
They were underdogs in both games against Kerry and Mayo but weren’t in the slightest bit bothered.
Mentally, they all seemed so strong. That was the first year of the management of Feargal Logan and Brian Dooher so, for a maiden season, to have that kind of a team on show was quite a feat.
Learned
I think of the Mayo team of the past decade and how they could have learned from what Tyrone did in 2021.
I see different Donegal teams and think the same thing. Donegal teams with more potential than Tyrone 2021, but Tyrone went out and did it.
I’ve heard so much about the Tyrone camp not being a