Hurling & Camogie

Promotion and Nicky Rackard success are achievable targets says new Tyrone hurling boss Michael McShane

Promotion and Nicky Rackard success are the targets for new Tyrone hurling boss Michael McShane. Picture: Seamus Loughran.
Promotion and Nicky Rackard success are the targets for new Tyrone hurling boss Michael McShane. Picture: Seamus Loughran. Promotion and Nicky Rackard success are the targets for new Tyrone hurling boss Michael McShane. Picture: Seamus Loughran.

SO MUCH remains unknown: When will squads be able to meet again? Train? Play games?

But what is beyond doubt is that, in Michael McShane, Tyrone have appointed a manager with a proven track record and now the Antrim native is determined to bring the success he has enjoyed with Derry club Slaughtneil to the Red Hand hurlers over the coming seasons.

On-line get-togethers and home-based training programmes will have to fill in for team-talks and pitch sessions as McShane begins life as an inter-county manager in the strangest of times. But he says his goals - promotion to Division Two and a Nicky Rackard Cup - are achievable if Tyrone can match their potential with dedication.

McShane has guided Slaughtneil to three Ulster Championships in the last four years and will continue his successful collaboration with the Emmet’s club. But the split season had left him ‘twiddling his thumbs’ and, with time on his hands, he felt the time was right to take his first plunge into the inter-county scene.

“The challenge is what attracted me to the job,” he said.

“And this is the first time you can actually do inter-county and club - beforehand the seasons were over-lapping and you couldn’t do it. I haven’t been doing anything since the 20th of September when the Derry final was played. It was good to get a bit of down-time and a bit of family-time but I wasn’t looking forward to another four or five months of doing next-to-nothing so when this opportunity came up I thought: ‘Well, I’ve got the chance to do it, so I’ll take it on’.

“I’m committed to Slaughtneil and I look forward to working with them when the club season gets going but in the meantime I was sitting twiddling my thumbs. There are 17 players in the Slaughtneil panel who are now involved in inter-county hurling and football and the rest of the lads have a maintenance programme for the next three or four months as we head towards the club season.

“So I have the time on my hands to do two roles and I was excited by the challenge. There’s a great squad of players there, I’ve had conversations with a few of them and that led me to believe that they are ambitious, they want to be successful – they want to get up into Division Two and have a crack at winning the Nicky Rackard.

“When you have a group of lads who are prepared to work hard and are ambitious then that’s half the battle. I think I’ve got that so I’m looking forward to the new challenge.”

McShane inherits a Tyrone side that showed promise under previous manager Mattie Lennon. Last year Lennon’s side finished third in Division 3A, just a point behind promoted Armagh and Donegal. A draw with Armagh in the final round of games effectively cost them promotion but they recovered from the setback and made it to the semi-finals of the Nicky Rackard Cup and led by a point at the interval but lost out to eventual champions Donegal.

“They have been knocking on the door and they’re well capable of winning Division Three and the Nicky Rackard but there are other good teams in those competitions who will be thinking the same,” agreed McShane.

“The potential is there, there’s absolutely no doubt about that. I’ve come up against Carrickmore and Dungannon (both play in the Derry club league) as Slaughtneil manager and I know the quality that’s there, there are some superb hurlers in Tyrone and my job is to go in and try and make them that bit stronger and maybe a wee bit more savvy and tactically and technically better as a group. “There is a lot of work to be done there by myself and the team but I’ve no doubt that the potential is there and as long as they can match that with the hunger then they’re halfway there.

“I spoke to a couple of players just to gauge the mood in the camp and the feedback I got was very positive and of course that encouraged me to go ahead and let my name go forward for the job.”

Getting to know the players will be a challenge for the new boss. He has been in Zoom meetings through his work which have had 25 people logging on and that, or the ‘Teams’ App, will be the format for his early get-togethers.

“I have to get to know them and that is going to be very difficult in these strange times,” he says.

“The first thing you’d want to do when you’re taking over a new team is to sit down and have a chat with them and let them know what your plans are and just get to know them.

“But we can’t do that in the times that we’re in. We can’t train and I’m going to have to talk to them remotely and get some sort of training plan put in place that they can work on, on their own. It’s not ideal, there’s no date yet as to when we are going to be able to get together.

“The National League was to start at the end of February but that’s certainly not going to happen – it could be near Easter before we get doing that. So it’s a bit of a balls-up to put it bluntly but everybody is in the same boat and we just have to get on with it.”

As for what players will be present at the first online meeting, McShane has some good contacts who are involved in the Tyrone club scene. Cormac Donnelly, trainer at Slaughtneil for three years, is the coach at Carrickmore, the current Tyrone champions, and McShane will touch base with him and others before picking his panel.

“Everybody will be starting with a clean slate, I’ll not be taking anybody’s final opinion other than my own,” he said.

“We’ll get players who want to play for Tyrone, we’ll get them out onto the pitch and get a look at them and then I’ll make my mind up over whether they’re what I’m looking for or not.

“I’ll have a look at the games they played last year as well so there’s a bit of work to be done for me over the next few weeks gathering putting together some information but, sure, that’s all part of it.”

Having enjoyed so much success at Ulster club championship level, McShane would like to see the inter-county version, which hasn’t been played since 2017, return

The competition – which dates back to 1900 - has been suspended before and been brought back to life but McShane admits that fixtures pressure means it’s unlikely that the Liam Harvey Cup will be dusted down and polished up any time soon.

“I would like to see it come back,” he said.

“You have to go back a good few years now but there were some great games in the Ulster Championship between Antrim and Down, Antrim and Derry and Down and Derry. I’d be under no illusions that Antrim, Derry and Down are certainly ahead of Tyrone, Armagh and Donegal but there’s no reason why it couldn’t be played in a seeded way if you can get time in the diary.

“That’s the biggest problem they have at the moment – the diary is quite full for both inter-county and club – there’s only 52 weeks in the year and, at the present time whilst I would like to see it being played, I don’t think there’s the time for it to be honest. I just can’t see it happening.”