LEVELS of the governmental response type may make all such matters moot but Tyrone captain Mattie Donnelly accepts they'll have to go up several performance levels over the next weeks to avoid relegation and a Championship exit.
The Red Hands lost by four points away to Donegal in round six of the League, leaving them probably needing to avoid defeat away to Mayo next Sunday in order to preserve their Division One status.
A week later Tyrone are due to return to Ballybofey to take on the provincial champions in an Ulster SFC quarter-final and Donnelly knows they are two massive matches which will require much better displays than produced on Sunday past:
"We're obviously going to have to ramp it up another level next weekend to hold on to our Division One status.
"From what we saw there today, we'll have to go up another few levels again the week after that. It is what it is, we're faced with that now and we'll have to deal with it."
Tyrone have a good record in Castlebar, but Mayo will be confident after thumping Galway so the Trillick man expects an intense battle:
"It's a championship game, it is knock-out. If you lose, you're knocked out of Division One, and we know how important it is, and both teams take great pride in being Division One teams.
"So we're going to have to take the learnings from today and see if we can implement them next week."
One obvious lesson – arguably two – relates to the goals Donegal scored, especially the second one, by Jamie Brennan, which came after Tyrone lost possession high up the pitch:
"When we had clawed them back, they got that goal to give them another bit of breathing space.
"The manner of the goals as well was disappointing, they got in behind us so easily, so we'll have to address that. We'll have to see where they came from and address them.
"We came out and clawed them back in and they hit us with that goal again. Both the goals were similar, where they got in behind us very easy.
"If you're conceding goals at this level, they have to be hard-earned, and they probably were soft enough."
As with everyone else, Tyrone had to try to 'click' after a short period of preparation, and didn't come close enough, Donnelly acknowledged:
"It was always about feeling our way back into the new season, getting playing with each other…
"We definitely weren't up at championship pitch and probably weren't up to the pitch that a game like today would require.
"Certainly they were a pitch or two above us. There was a bit of that, and there was a bit of the game in two weeks at the back of your head.
"But we still came here to win and now we're in the position where we have to win next weekend.
"It is probably good preparation for the championship the week after, and I'd say where we didn't have challenge games, today was just about getting used to playing with each other."
Getting it right for the second meeting with Donegal, set for Sunday November 1, will be tough:
"Obviously there's going to be moving parts in that over the next two weeks, and plenty of work to do and not a lot of time to do it.
"We have all played with each other enough, but certainly Donegal did look a bit sharper than us - but it's in two weeks' time that we'll be judging ourselves on."
The highlight from a Tyrone perspective was the display by Conor McKenna, who scored 1-2 from play on his senior debut after returning from Australia.
"He's obviously very, very talented," said Donnelly of the Eglish man. "He has competed at an elite level,
"I had no concerns about him slotting in, especially when I saw him up close and training, his ball skills, how advanced they were. He has obviously done a lot of work on them.
"An athlete like that is always going to just slot back in and adjust accordingly, and today we saw promising sprouts of it, and it's only going to get better as well."
The dark shadow over the day was the death of former Tyrone goalkeeper Jonny Curran on Sunday morning, and Mattie remembered him with affection:
"Jonny was a team-mate of a lot of us boys, and we were sharing a few stories of our memories of Johnny, and they're all positive.
"He was just a fun fellow to be around and he was a great character in the dressing room.
"He never took football too seriously, he just enjoyed it and went out and played.
"He was a free spirit, and all of our memories of him are all positive.
"It's extremely sad and it was a shock to us, we can only pray for the family."
