RONAN McNAMEE will be available for Tyrone next year. The Aghyaran St Davog’s full-back said “you’d be mad to go anywhere” as he put an end to rumours that he intended to take a break from football.
Far from taking time out, he has set his sights on winning silverware with the Red Hands after he returns from a holiday Down Under at the end of the year.
“I’ve a brother in Australia and I’m planning to go over and see him at Christmas for a couple of weeks,” he explained.
“My brother is out there and he’s not coming home at Christmas. I might go out for a loch of weeks, maybe a month, I’ll see how it goes. But [the rumour] has grown out of proportion. It has grown a massive set of legs. I plan on being available.
“It’s always been in my mind to go and see about me, but this year went well and you’d be mad to go anywhere because there’s an All-Ireland in that team, definitely.”
McNamee made his Tyrone debut in 2012 and started at wing half-back on the team that lost to Kerry in round three of the Qualifiers. In the following two seasons, the Red Hands had struggled to make a decisive breakthrough, but they found a new gear this year when they beat Limerick, Meath, Tipperary, Sligo and Ulster champions Monaghan before bowing out to the Kingdom once again, this time in the All-Ireland semi-final.
McNamee says the introduction of All-Ireland U21 winners like Mark Bradley and Conor Myler helped give the squad a new lease of life: “The young boys, the U21s, coming in made a massive difference,” he said.
“All those boys would be well capable of making a massive impact on any county team – the whole U21 thing [winning the All-Ireland] helped the county massively. But Tyrone didn’t become a bad team overnight, we had a bad year in 2014 – a bad loss to Armagh. One poor performance that year cost us, but I feel that Tyrone aren’t far away.”
The Red Hands weren’t far away from Kerry, who defend their All-Ireland title against Dublin at Croke Park on Sunday, but they lost narrowly to them in the last four. Chances went a begging that day and all the talk in the aftermath was of getting another crack at them next season.
“You could sense that boys were mad keen,” said McNamee, who works as a sales rep with snack provider KP.
“It was an opportunity missed – on a different day, we could have had maybe five goals. We had massive chances – Kerry never created a goal chance and we created five. We’ve a lot to learn to improve our game. I feel that I had a good year, a solid year, but I have a lot to learn, so I’ll not be getting too far ahead of myself.”
Confirmation that McNamee is staying on means Mickey Harte looks likely to have a full panel to pick from next year. Harte was reappointed for two more years at a Tyrone county board meeting and McNamee says no-one comes close to the triple All-Ireland-winning manager.
“It’s good that there’s a bit of closure on it,” he said.
“To me, there’s nobody else. Who else is going to come in? Nobody would be even close. Why he had to go for the job is beyond me. Whenever he wants to stay at it, he should have no problem getting to stay. That’s my opinion and, personally, I don’t think there’ll be too many boys who could come in and fill his shoes.”
