A new focus
IT was a taste of what’s to come for his native county. Last October, Cormac McAnallen arrived at St Catherine’s school in Armagh city, where he had recently landed a history and politics post, only to find his teenage students giddier than usual. The entire school swaying with the dizziness affecting the surrounding areas.
In both the class-room and staff-room, a good mood pervaded.
They say All-Irelands change the complexion of counties, but the extent of the celebrations still stopped McAnallen in his tracks.
“Some day,” he thought, “some day”, the same thing will happen in Tyrone.
“It was great to be working in Armagh those first few weeks after the All-Ireland. It just made me see first hand what it did for the county, what it did for everyone in the county. It sharpened my own ambition to help Tyrone win their first All-Ireland because it would do exactly the same thing for us as it did for Armagh.”
Maybe, this year. Well, it is Tyrone’s year, after all. How often have football people gathered and said that to each other over the past two decades? After every Peter Canavan scoring spree in Clones, after every successful under-age team the county seem to produce at will, after every Ulster title.
The years designated for Tyrone end with some other county dizzy from success, while in Omagh and Pomeroy, they sift through the wreckage of more broken dreams.
McAnallen shrugs and smiles when asked about the high expectations. When you play football for Tyrone, you just have to live with the questions on the street.
Will you take Armagh? Will this be the year? Is so-and-so good enough to be on a team with All-Ireland ambitions?
This week will be no different.
Tyrone people still smart from 1986 and all that. Revenge has been a long time coming, so Cormac feels some refuge might be in order this week.
There is always an undercurrent of anticipation in Tyrone. This summer, it seems to have manifested itself into fevered enthusiasm with a lot of the media hitching a ride.
In the rush to acknowledge Tyrone’s place at the top table, people are forgetting they aren’t playing some fly-by-night Kerry side.
This will be their fourth consecutive All-Ireland semi-final. Tyrone haven’t seen this stage since 1996.
“Our supporters have been excellent this year, and because the team has been going well, it is only natural they’ll get excited,” points out McAnallen.
“I don’t think expectations are unnaturally high in Tyrone. The county has been searching for an All-Ireland for a long time now, so any good team that comes down the line, they will get excited about it. But we are still playing Kerry.”
He doesn’t seem like someone carrying the hopes of a ravenous tribe. It is better to ignore the great expectations.
“We don’t all sit around getting stressed out about it,” McAnallen laughs. “We are just concentrating on football. It is fairly obvious why expectation has been so high in Tyrone for the past couple of years, with the under-age success. But those players I came through with, we have become accustomed to things being expected of it.”
McAnallen was part of the latest golden generation of youngsters moulded by Tyrone schools. Although Eoin Mulligan has provided more fire-works in the past couple of years, back when the two were promising later bounties as teenagers, McAnallen was considered the leading light. He skippered the county to their emotional, heart-wrenching minor victory of ‘98 (coming just a month after the Omagh bombing).
He grins at that bittersweet memory. When the referee blew the whistle, a stunned McAnallen found himself with the ball in his hands. He wouldn’t let go. “The ball has to be given to your captain,” the referee implored him. Cormac turned around and quipped, “but I am the captain.”
There were tears in the dressing-room after McAnallen lifted that trophy for a county still in shock. And the promises made by their football that afternoon, the players seemed determined to keep.
McAnallen, Mulligan, Stephen O’Neill, they would form a base for the U21 success. By 2001, Art McRory and Eugene McKenna had gambled on making Cormac the functionary in the Tyrone engine room.
Dividends were yielded. By July, half the golden generation had Ulster senior medals in their pockets. Derry’s greater experience brought the summer to a crashing halt, but by the end of the year, McAnallen still had a slew of awards to his name.
Young footballer of the year, BBC Player of the Ulster championship, Ulster Player of the year. Before October was out, he was representing his country in the Melbourne Cricket Grounds alongside Seamus Moynihan and Anthony Tohill.
The incredible rate of McAnallen’s development in 2001 was such, there was always a danger last summer would be fallow.
It was whispered again that ‘it’s Tyrone’s year’, but McAnallen accepts now the team did nothing to justify the claim. All the same, nobody expected the heartless surrender to Sligo in Croke Park.
“A lot has been said about the Sligo game. I don’t know if it was a case of maturity. I just think we came up against a Sligo team that produced an excellent performance, and a Sligo team that were never given enough credit for the football they played last year.
“It was an off-day, they happen to teams, but the memory of it has been important.
“In terms of players development, that game was vital. That performance was something thrown at us from that day until the start of the league and even during it. Nobody likes to be criticised and some of the things did hurt. But, it just made us doubly determined to do things right this year. Aspects of that performance might have been buried with the Fermanagh game, but Mickey has reminded us that the first time we falter, it is lurking in the background. That has helped us maintain our focus.”
Focus.
That is something else about Tyrone this year. It is like their eyes have never left the target of a September Sunday in Croker. The change in management has seen subtle changes in how this team is viewed. Most of the players learned the ropes under Harte’s hungry eye, either in under-age or club ranks. But what else has he brought to the sideline?
“It’s a question I am asked a lot, and I am not too sure about the answer. Mickey has just drilled into us that we can never switch off in games, no matter how things are going. And that is what we have done in all the games, people have called it a ruthless streak, I don’t know about that,” said McAnallen.
“But, I think the players have matured at the right time for Mickey. For the past three or four years, people were expecting a lot from young players. They are more mature now, have the experience of a few years of football behind them. The new players Mickey has brought in have worked too, John Devine and Seán Cavanagh, have settled very well. And there are still some of the older players like Peter there.”
MCANALLEN is a safe interview option. Prompted, perhaps, by a cautious manager, Seán Cavanagh has decided to call time on the easy press access he has granted all year. A decision that will delight Mickey Harte, hoping to cover the hype surrounding his young midfield powerhouse. Eoin Mulligan’s pitch personality, with the dainty flicks and bleached hair, may be flamboyant, but he has shied from the spotlight in recent months.
McAnallen, an articulate teacher with a keen interest in local history, is at ease under the media’s gaze. It’s not in his nature to be outspoken and his unassuming manner means he regularly peppers his answers with the ‘I don’t mean to be coy’ approach.
Even if the sternest examination of his inter-county career awaits him on Sunday afternoon. Injuries to Collie Holmes and Chris Lawn ensured McAnallen was brought back to the edge of the square, but most of Tyrone are happy with that.
Even when they were playing mardi gras stuff during the league, questions hung over nerves in Tyrone’s last line when bombarded by high ball.
As a seasoned midfielder, McAnallen has little trouble dealing with high ball. But while the Antrim manager PJ O’Hare has predicted Harte’s switch of McAnallen will be seen as a managerial masterstroke by the end of the season, he remains relatively untested there.
Neither Down’s Dan Gordon or Fermanagh’s Stephen Maguire (one of the most athletic full-forwards around) got the kind of ball to make McAnallen sweat.
“It surprised me a little in that I hadn’t played there as an inter-county player, but I had played there a fair bit for my club,” McAnallen recalls of when Harte told him of the decision.
“Mickey just took the chance and see how I fared, the two lads I marked, I don’t know if you can make fair assessments based on that. Dan Gordon, we knew what to expect from him, he was awesome against us in the first game. So, we knew how to defend Down’s tactics.
“Stephen didn’t get the supply he needed, actually I was very surprised at the way Fermanagh froze. It is something we can empathise with, and I hope it doesn’t destroy all the good work which they did this year. Everyone knows they are far better than what they showed. I don’t mean to be coy or anything but the two lads were given no favours by the lack of ball they received. Whoever I am marking in the Kerry game, I expect it will be a different challenge.”
That is if McAnallen plays there at all. Injuries have cleared up and switching McAnallen will allow Cavanagh to roam forward more for Tyrone on Sunday.
But, Kevin Hughes has been excelling in the past three games and the campaign to keep McAnallen on the edge of the square is gathering pace in Tyrone.
“Cormac has given Tyrone’s full-back line a stability they haven’t had in a long time,” ex-manager Eugene McKenna believes.
“In the past couple of years, myself and Art didn’t have that option because Seán Cavanagh was still on the fringes. But, they have the luxury to move Cormac back there now. He has a good pair of hands, he is a great reader of the game, he attacks the ball.
“Myself and Art toyed with the idea of playing Cormac at centre-back last year, and many would see that as his natural position. But I think he should stay in the full-back line.”
John Lynch, a former great of the Tyrone defence, is happy with McAnallen’s presence at full-back.
“I am delighted to see him there, he is the sort of footballer that can apply himself to any position. And he has made it look easy and made our defence look a stronger unit since he has been back there.
“I was advocating trying Cormac as our full-back for ages. We had problems there even during the league. He reads the game so well that he would be comfortable in any position. And he is a young player who wants to continue to learn. He wants to keep himself improving. That is a great sign of any player,” Doyle said.
These days, McAnallen can be found enjoying the unseasonal weather this country has been experiencing, getting used to these long holidays as a teacher.
He talks about how fortunate he is with free time in his profession, how when the team convene for training, the doctors and vets are fitting a couple of hours into their busiest schedules at this time of year.
He might use the day to plan further the pursuit of the elusive prize or catch up on some local history, a passion inherited from his father. The Nine Years War, when Tyrone took on the country’s rulers, around the 17th century, is a particular favourite, phases like the Battle of Yellow Ford, that happened a few miles from St Catherine’s girls school where he works. It was a key battle in a War between Elizabethan forces and an Ulster army under the command of Red Hugh O’Neill, Tyrone’s most famous folk hero.
At Yellow Ford, O’Neill led combined forces of Fermanagh, Tyrone and Donegal to defeat Elizabeth’s army.
It has been a long time since a Tyrone man had enjoyed a national success on that scale, although they have been expected to on many occasions.
They are getting close, though. Sam might be making a return visit to St Catherine’s school in Armagh city.
In very different circumstances.
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