WHEN TIERNAN MCCANN saw Aidan O’Shea go down under a soft challenge in the Fermanagh penalty area the weekend before last, he could see the storm clouds gathering in the horizon.
McCann was lambasted from all quarters for throwing himself to the ground in an incident that led to Monaghan’s Darren Hughes being dismissed in last year’s All-Ireland quarter-final.
The Tyrone wing-back admitted that he resonated with O’Shea after the Mayo man was rounded upon in the wake of their victory over Fermanagh.
“Well, 70 minutes into a game, and we all know how tough the Monaghan game was last year, you are not even thinking about things,” McCann said.
“Your fluids have gone, your energy levels are down, things happen that you can’t do anything about, and you just have to move on from it really.”
Asked about his own experience of the abuse he received after last year’s incident, McCann said, “We won at the end of it but the talk after it was [difficult]. My family were on holiday in Portugal at the time so I was at home [alone] – it was tough.”
“But it made me stronger as a person, and I just had to concentrate on the next game really because it was just two weeks later and then, after the Kerry game, that was the year over.
“So it has been a while since it has been talked about. The last couple of days it has been brought up again – the Aidan O’Shea thing saw it brought up – I just really parked it and concentrated on myself.
“Hopefully people will be talking about footballing performances rather than what happened last year. I have just been concentrating on footballing performances since then, going out every day and working as hard as I can.
“Obviously hindsight is a wonderful thing and we have all done stuff we would probably wished we hadn’t or done differently. That’s life. It is something I have had to learn from and move on. That was what I did last year and what I have had to carry through to this year.”
On Sunday it was Tyrone who were the victim of a couple of controversial dismissals, with Cathal McShane and Mattie Donnelly black-carded in the first-half.
“I thought Cathal’s looked quite harsh, on the replay,” McCann said of the first black-card.
“David [Goldrick] was 45 metres away, and can only go on what the linesman said. Maybe it’s the ambiguity really. It’s very hard to judge what is black or not.
“You just have to be very careful nowadays, track runners and don’t jump in too early. It’s another dimension to GAA that we’ve just had to adapt to, but that’s what football’s about adapting to the rules and different systems.”
“Since Mattie’s one was given on Sunday, there have been pundits saying it was one and wasn’t one. That’s after viewing it another couple of times. They’re still not 100 percent. That in itself shows how difficult it is for referees to determine it to be fair to them.”
When Donnelly was sent packing for his collision with Eoin McHugh, it halved the number of former All-Stars Tyrone had on the field on play. But McCann says the Red Hand responded the right way to the absence of such a talisman.
“The whole day things weren’t going our way. At half-time, there wasn’t that much talk. We knew ourselves we needed to step up. Losing Mattie (Donnelly) as well, sometimes that can galvanise the group. And I thought a lot of boys did step up in the second half.
“It was a bit like Ronaldo going off last week, for Portugal, they just raised their game, and it was the same sort of thing for us. Now is the time to lift it.”
It left Tyrone with just one former All-Star on the field in Sean Cavanagh. Now the elder statesman of the side, the 2008 Footballer of the Year drove Mickey Harte’s troops to victory by sheer force of will.
“Maybe the younger lads, and the fact the team has changed over the last years, Sean has been given a new lease of life. He is 33 and has won every accolade in the book, he has five All Stars, three All Irelands, player of the year award, he has got everything and he is still working so hard.
“On Monday he was putting in a picture of him doing a recovery session, the day after doing a recovery session at 33. I heard the commentators assess his performance and they were suggesting he was very quiet, but in the second half, he was anything but.
“He just tore into Donegal. Even the score where he fisted it over the bar, it was like the old Sean Cavanagh, where he fisted it over the back of the net.”
McCann put Tyrone’s frightening fitness levels down to Peter Donnelly’s training methods.
“I can’t say enough about Peter. He’s awesome, always looking to learn, new ideas, like looking at the All Blacks, how they warm-up, activate things. It’s unique but it’s testament to him, it’s really standing to us, and he’s had a massive influence on our success.
“I think the more games you play, the more confident you get. That was fairly evident on Sunday, playing until 75 minutes, on a roasting hot day in Clones. If you can do it there you can do it anywhere.”
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