Would Dooher be your favourite ever after Canavan?
You could never love Cavanagh the same way, too much of a type-A personality, you know that Monaghan men were basically right when they said he was a hateful driving cunt.
I like Big Joe as well. McGuigan was nearly the most exciting footballer of all of them but not a likeable character. Ricey was dirty but there was something about him that youd always forgive him. Muggsy was great fun to watch but I never forgave him for decking Dessie Mone before throw-in at Bantyās first Ulster Final. McAnallen was likeable and heroic but too bland.
Gormley is my fav after Canavan Iād say but Dooher and Ricey would be very close too. Ricey is a very likable chap, he could get simple fellas wound up awful easy.
Sean Cavanagh was a fantastic player but a bit of a cry baby.
The reason he got off was because it was too depraved and distasteful to talk about. Iād be wary of hitching your wagon to that particular star. Itās a black mark against Kerry that he wasnāt hospitalised
I played with plenty of Tyrone lads in my time, best trainers iv ever seen and by a distance. Football came naturally to very few of them but they would be effective just through effort. Dooher would be a great example to sum them up, in one of them points he somehow looks awkward even hopping the ball. Very few hit as many scores with the outside of the boot as him, though he had more than his share of wides as well.
Thereās no bitterness. He had all the attributes he needed etc, and he has plenty of medals.
Plenty of fine lads on those Tyrone teams, thatās obvious
A legendary squad, legendary story. You were fair earlier on when you said that beside the current Dubs they were the best squad of all time but I dont think they really got enough medals for the amount if quality they had and that has to be a big mark against them.
Player for player they were far ahead of Kerry and showed that whenever they played Kerry but ultimately Kerry won more All Irelands that decade with inferior players.
Tyrone werenāt a machine in the way Kerry were but in terms of peaks they were higher.
That they werenāt a machine was probably partly due to them being in Ulster and not Munster, partly due to their history as a county of not winning All-Irelands and partly due to them having a sort of maverick quality to them as a squad.
That maverick quality was both their strength and their weakness. There was a deep intelligence in that team, you could see it in the way they were able to figure things out themselves on the pitch when a team stole a march on them, particularly against Kerry in '05 and '08. But at the same time you could tell football wasnāt everything to most of them and sometimes you could collectively see them mentally say to themselves āah fuck this, weāre not botheredā. It meant they were able to reach Everest like peaks and yet plumb deep valleys in between.
They sort of reminded me a bit of the Offaly hurling team of the 1990s. On a given day, they could be shit, but when they were on it, youād never back against them.
That game against Dublin in the rain in '08, people thought they were finished, theyād been poor that year up to then, they werneāt even very good in the first 20 minutes of that match, and then the switch suddenly flicked on and it all came flowing out of them like a pent up, raging river.
They had a lot of injuries and absences too. They lost Cormac McAnallen in early 2004 who was a key player and a huge personality in that dressing room and would have been around for the guts oh the next decade you would imagine.
Brian McGuigan, Stephen OāNeill and Enda McGinley all had a few bad years with injuries. Kevin Hughes took a year out in 05. Collie Holmes and Ciaran Gourley are two lads for me who would be regulars but injuries restricted them to bit part roles.
But there were plenty of guys there alright who had the talent to achieve so much more but it just didnāt spark with them, the likes of Ger Cavlan and Raymie Mulgrew had the talent and attributes to be some of the best in the game but just didnāt want to sacrifice what was needed.
Itās a real pity that group didnāt come along 4 or 5 years earlier to have a prime Canavan leading them. Canavanās three years under Harte were blighted by injury. He didnāt play a full 70 for Tyrone after the 2003 Ulster campaign, he did his ankle against Kerry early in the semi final and he was never fully right after it. He was still able to showcase his genius though even with the injuries and in the twilight of his career.
I will never ever forgive Pat Spillane for his puke football comment. He can get fucked. I gave a long post a while ago about how the poison from that comment still affects Gaelic football today, I wont bore you by repeating it.
I think it was the other way round and kerry had the better individuals. Tyrone the better system and the better sense of purpose in the big games. I was watching it on eir sport the other day and Joe brolly before the 08 final said 5 of the kerry forwards would walk into the Tyrone team. They also had the three o ses so Iād say man for man they were definitely better.
