Tyrone count the cost of facilitating club scene

MOUNTING injury lists have rarely been a source of mirth but Arizona State football coach John Cooper managed a great line up back in the 1980s when he shook his head and said: “If this keeps up, our team picture this year will be an x-ray”.

Mickey Harte, a known admirer of American sports’ philosophers, would appreciate such gallows humour more than most.

The only thing that has matched his county’s success this past few years has been its attrition rate.

The last two years have been particularly trying. Last year’s All-Ireland defence was torpedoed before it left port by injuries to Brian McGuigan, Brian Dooher, Stephen O’Neill and a small army of less renowned, but equally pivotal, names.

The epidemic has spread to this campaign. McGuigan is again out of the picture, this time with an eye injury, and a catalogue of players including Sean Cavanagh, Owen Mulligan and Martin Penrose have all missed sizeable chunks of the season due to ailments.

O’Neill is only fit to take a place on the bench tomorrow, Gerard Cavlan will sit it out altogether and another clutch of players will do likewise.

One possible reason for the problem is that unlike most counties, Tyrone don’t put their ‘domestic’ product into deep freeze until All-Ireland fever has subsided. Though they play Donegal in an Ulster semi-final tomorrow, the county championship quarter-finals went ahead as planned last weekend.

Unsurprisingly, a couple of the county boys came a cropper with Tommy McGuigan and Niall Gormley picking up a broken jaw and hand between them and a two-month spell off the roster for their troubles.

Held aloft by many in the GAA as an example of how the club and county scenes can live in harmony, some people would gladly ride roughshod over the clubs if it meant Harte having a full deck to choose from for a change.

“Some people do look at it that way,” says county board member Dominic McCaughey. “The clubs would respond to that by saying, okay, there have been injuries in the club games, but there have been just as many in training sessions.

“It’s six of one and half a dozen of the other. Players pick up injuries playing with the county that keep them out of their club games as well so it goes both ways. Most people are very reasonable about the whole thing.”

It helps that Harte doesn’t believe in challenge matches, preferring the competitive edge players experience in games between the parishes but it wasn’t always so harmonious.

Back in 2002, joint manager Eugene McKenna was spitting fire when Stephen O’Neill and defender Ciaran Meenagh got injured playing a club game just hours after appearing in an NFL semi-final win over Mayo.

O’Neill was fit in time for the final two weeks later where they defeated Cavan but the scare made a lot of people sit up and take notice. McKenna and Art McRory received assurances that such a scenario wouldn’t be foisted upon them again.

Harte took over the following season, bringing with him an empathy for the club player that many an inter-county manager has lacked.

With 17 of his panel involved, the county quarter-finals were postponed before the All-Ireland semi-final against Kerry in 2003 but Harte gave his blessing to the last eight being run just two weeks before the final against Armagh.

Seventy minutes from the county’s first ever Sam Maguire, it was a brave move but the perfect example of Harte’s belief that the show must go on regardless of the possible perils.

“I’m happy to try and work as well as possible with both scenes,” Harte said earlier this year during one particularly bad run of injuries, “as long as we get sufficient time to prepare for important games.”

That philosophy was set in stone just months after that first All-Ireland title when Harte met with club and county officials and thrashed out an agreement on the use of his inter-county players.

Clubs play 22 league games in the county and Harte agreed to releasing his players for at least half of them, as well as for championship fixtures.

“If we go out of the All-Ireland early all that is scrubbed,” says McCaughey. “Players can play in more if that is the case so it is a flexible system.

“We had the bit of success two years ago in winning the All-Ireland so everybody tends to feel that it is for the greater good but it might be a different story if the county side wasn’t so successful. That might happen down the line.”

The GAA season being what it is, unforeseen events tend to thwart the best-laid plans and the club calendar went askew two years ago because of the county’s ten-game summer and again last year when they were diverted towards the back door. This year has been a breeze by comparison. The league programme is already half finished and the senior championship is down to the last four teams. When the semis will be played is another point entirely.

“God knows,” says one club player who was involved in last week’s quarter-finals. “If Tyrone go far in the championship it could be the end of the summer by the time they are played.

“Some players aren’t going to hang around for that. Lots of fellas have the chance to go and play in the States and you wouldn’t blame them for going. What are they going to do if they stay here?”

Which just goes to show, you can please some of the people some of the time…