Tyrone captain Mattie Donnelly is certain his players can pick themselves up off the floor and get themselves ready to face the Dubs next weekend.
Smarting from a 19 points hammering by Galway, the Red Hands badly need a lift, but the All-Ireland champions are more likely to be ruthless than sympathetic when they visit Omagh on Saturday evening.
To make matters worse, Tyrone will be without Allstar full forward Cathal McShane for some time due to a serious ankle injury sustained early in the second half at Tuam on Sunday.
“You can't be feeling sorry for yourself for too long, the boys will be hurting a lot,” said Donnelly.
“Everyone involved with the set up will be hurting a lot but hopefully that'll lead to a reaction against Dublin next weekend.”
Following the heaviest defeat in Mickey Harte’s 17-year reign as manager, the approach this week will be heavily weighted towards getting psychological issues corrected.
“There'll be no flogging at this stage with the games coming thick and fast, it will be more so the mental side of things,'' said Donnelly.
''With Dublin coming to town that can take care of itself too.”
Amidst the carnage of a 2-25 to 0-12 annihilation, Donnelly, himself on the long-term injury list, saw a number of positives in Tyrone’s performance.
“It is hard to pick out the positives but there were many. I was pleased with the performance of some boys, and I thought at the start of the second half we were clawing the deficit back rightly. It looked promising when we got it back to 0-14 to 0-11.
“We had the momentum and that was a positive as we weren't in a good position at half-time, we were clawing it back.”
Behind by six points at half-time, and a man down, the Red Hands battled back to close the gap to three.
But the concession of a penalty and a second dismissal effectively ended their challenge, and the floodgates opened.
“Everything that happened thereafter was obviously bad but you never dwell on things too much in the immediate aftermath of a match. It's never as bad as it seems or as good as it seems. We'll digest it over the next 48 hours and address it on Tuesday night.”
In reality, Tyrone were always destined to struggle after losing Kieran McGeary to a straight red card late in the first half.
It was a decision which Donnelly viewed as extremely harsh.
“Look, Kieran is a combative player and an honest player, he saw the hit was there and I thought it was too. Kieran will have said himself it was a harsh decision.
“Obviously you don't have the luxury of viewing it back at the time but my initial thought was that it was very harsh and it was a costly one for us as he's a big leader to us and we were always fighting an uphill battle after that.
“With 15 on the pitch we were getting a lot of openings in the first-half, we hit the post four times and weren't clinical at all. I'd have taken that five-point deficit at half-time with 15 men on the pitch.
“Even with 14 we were clawing it back but a few events thereafter was disastrous in terms of us getting anything out of the game.”
