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Mickey Harte urges Tyrone's Sean Cavanagh to take time

 Sean Cavanagh's afternoon was cut short on Saturday with a red card
 Sean Cavanagh's afternoon was cut short on Saturday with a red card  Sean Cavanagh's afternoon was cut short on Saturday with a red card

MICKEY Harte has urged his captain Sean Cavanagh to take “time out” and not to be rushing to any rash decisions over his Tyrone future after the three-time All-Ireland winner was controversially sent off in Saturday’s All-Ireland quarter-final defeat to Mayo.

Harte was angered with the circumstances behind Cavanagh’s first yellow card.

Television pictures showed Lee Keegan on top of a prostrate Cavanagh before the start of the second half – but when the pair were separated Gough issued a yellow card to both players.

In the 59th minute, and with the game in the balance at 0-11 apiece, Cavanagh picked up a second yellow for a high tackle on Aidan O’Shea and was dismissed.

Cavanagh’s sending-off was the turning point in Saturday’s tense quarter-final.

The sides were level again at 0-12 apiece before Keegan fired over the winning score in the 65th minute to book Mayo a semi-final meeting with Tipperary.

Cathal McCarron, Darren McCurry and Niall Morgan all had half-chances to level the game in the closing stages but missed the target.

Both Harte and Mayo boss Stephen Rochford admitted they didn’t see the incident that sparked Keegan and Cavanagh’s yellow cards – but the Tyrone manager was adamant about who was the aggressor.

“I didn’t see it,” said Harte, “so it’s unfortunate it happened. But I know this for sure – Sean Cavanagh doesn’t go looking for cards, never did in his whole career.

“It seems a shame that he would be victim to somebody else enticing him into that arena. He doesn’t go looking for anything. I can say that for sure with no fear of contradiction.

“He never went looking for a yellow card in his life. It seems a shame that a man at this stage of his career, has given so much to the game, can fall victim to that kind of stuff.”

When quizzed about Keegan’s approach to man-marking Cavanagh, Rochford defended his player and fired back at Harte that Diarmuid O’Connor was targeted by the Ulster champions.

“Maybe Mickey was watching it but he came out [from the changing rooms] after me and I didn’t see it,” said Rochford. 

“I can categorically tell you that there was no Tyrone player targeted in the Mayo dressing room.

“Was Diarmuid O’Connor targeted in the first two or three minutes if anyone wants to go down that line? Certainly Lee Keegan or any Mayo player was not under instruction to target any player.”

At one point in the first half, Keegan was hauling at Cavanagh beneath the Hogan Stand and the Tyrone captain was seen protesting to the nearby linesman.

“If a forward wants to go and attack and it ends up in a wrestling match, well, it’s not the forward who is going to instigate that,” Harte said.

“Officials make decisions, and this thing of ‘there’s always two involved’… There isn’t. There is always somebody that starts it. They need to be more tuned into who starts these things.”

The Tyrone manager added: “In a game of that nature, and to lose a man like Sean – we just didn’t lose any player, we lost our captain, the most experienced player we have – it left us under severe pressure.

“[But] Credit to the boys who played as long as they did and kept us in the game, because that was a huge loss to us. Not only his presence on the field but his ability to conjure up that winning score. You just can’t win games of this nature without a man like that on the field.”

It would be desperately disappointing way for Cavanagh to end his illustrious Tyrone career should he decide to leave the inter-county stage. But Harte expressed hope that the Moy man would continue in 2017.

“I know Sean is in a bad state at the minute and I suppose at the stage of his career and the effort he’s given, it wouldn’t be a good time to ask him [about retirement].

“I hope that he takes time out and reflects on what’s there for him. Who knows what that will tell him when he takes some time to think about it?”

Harte acknowledged sometimes the wrong men were taking shots at Mayo’s goal and that, in the final analysis, Tyrone “didn’t do the business” when it mattered most.

“It’s always good to win trophies and we won a few this year so I think it’s good for players’ confidence that they know they can win competitions, but this is the big one obviously, and we haven’t done the business in the big one.

“I suppose sometimes we had the wrong shooters on the ball. I won’t name them but there were some that had chances from distance that I wouldn’t have minded having somebody else. But nobody chose to take the team down in any way.

“If they had put them over the bar, we would be singing their praises.”

Keegan turned out to be Mayo’s hero when he sent over the equalising score in the 55th minute and then bagged the winner with five minutes of normal time remaining.

“Lee Keegan has been a consistent footballer over the last number of years,” said Rochford. “He was vice-captain in the International Rules and you don’t get that for no reason. When the call came out to him to hit two serious points in a real pressure situation, he hit them.

“We were ‘codding’ inside that he had missed one or two before – but cometh the hour, cometh the man. It was his moment.”