Allianz Football League Division One: Tyrone v Kerry (Sunday, 12.45pm, Healy Park, live on TG4)
WHAT last Saturday evening in Castlebar established most clearly is the absolute lack of confidence Tyrone have in themselves right now.
With each passing defeat the spotlight shines ever brighter on them, the questions get tougher, the criticism more intense and prolonged.
Peter Canavan even called out the Tyrone fans during the week for not travelling in numbers to Galway and Castlebar.
He’s one of very few people that could get away with saying it, and he’d have done so with the very explicit intention of eliciting a response from the Tyrone public in Omagh tomorrow.
Everyone and everything is in the firing line.
What the manner of the defeat in Mayo proved is that there’s no immediate quick fix for Tyrone here.
There are so many aspects of their game going wrong that it’s a brick-by-brick renovation needed over the next few weeks if they’re to have any impact on the summer.
It would be an enormous surprise if the first blocks laid aren’t defensive ones.
They went at Mayo and for 20 minutes, Tyrone played the best football they’ve played since winning in Killarney on the last day of last year’s league.
White shirts buzzed about, they were snappy and energetic, the ball moving fast, McCurry and McShane getting touches. But they only scored four points. Once the first goal went in at the other end, it was clear all the early confidence was very false. They went right back into their shell.
That unravelled the plan to front up to Kevin McStay’s side and left them brutally exposed down the middle of their goal.
It was around the middle of their own goal that the 2021 semi-final heist was planned. 35 turnovers, so many of them in that space around their ‘D’. They had a bit of same joy on the final day last year in Killarney, albeit with nothing to play for you couldn’t claim Kerry’s heads were fully tuned in that afternoon.
In 140 minutes against Mayo and Roscommon, Tyrone conceded seven goals. They also leaked three in the McKenna Cup final to Derry.
If you exclude the Covid league campaign of 2021, which produced a lot of unusual scorelines in the empty stadiums of a north-south format, nobody had conceded four goals in a Division One game since Roscommon put four past Cork all the way back in 2016.
It’s 11 goals leaked this year already for Tyrone, almost catching last year’s overall figure of 13 already.
So that has to be base camp for Feargal Logan and Brian Dooher, especially when it’s Kerry who are up next.
The All-Ireland champions have not yet shown much of their trademark fluidity in attack, barring when Monaghan went chasing it and left themselves wide to the world.
Mostly Jack O’Connor’s side have been running the ball, as if they’re using the games to put miles into the legs, while also dealing with the early-season realities of how they functioned differently when David Clifford wasn’t on the pitch.
Scraping by is enough for Kerry at the minute. They’re happy to stay up and it feels as though they’d happily avoid the taxation of a league final, with O’Connor saying last week they had no need to win it this year. When Kerry are in a mindset of picking and choosing what and when they win, it’s a danger to everyone.
Their team continues to morph back into its summer outline, if not yet its summer shape. Stefan Okunbor jumped the queue with a fine game on Rian O’Neill last week, while Adrian Spillane and Darragh Roche cling to their berths, although it seems the latter will eventually lose his no matter what he does.
Diarmuid O’Connor’s absence at midfield has been the most keenly felt but they’ll get away with it until the All-Ireland group stages begin. Only then will Kerry need to be right.
Tyrone put their emphasis last weekend on fronting up and going at Mayo. It went well for 20 minutes but the flaws quickly bared themselves. It wasn’t clear until later in the game just how light they are on confidence.
Only clean sheets will fix that. This isn’t a day for having a mad cut off Kerry. It’s a day for stopping goals and trying to gather up enough scores some road to crawl over the line.
Tyrone’s attacking structure, over which there are just as many question marks, will be severely tested if they put all their emphasis on keeping it tight, but they have to do it anyway.
So don’t expect anything pretty. A low-scoring Kerry victory.
