Australia-bound Canavan set to miss concluding rounds of league

By Barry O’Donnell

THERE was good and bad news for Tyrone supporters yesterday afternoon in Omagh.

The good was the convincing 2-23 to 1-14 triumph over Cavan which hopefully pumps life into their fairly stagnant (to now) National League Division Two campaign, with Darragh Canavan in peerless form up front hitting nine points.

The bad news was when manager Malachy O’Rourke confirmed afterwards that his Errigal Ciaran clubmate would miss the latter stages of the League as he heads to Australia for a month.

Canavan will be available for this Sunday’s meeting with Louth in Ardee before he jets off Down Under after that.

O’Rourke did reassure Tyrone fans however that the County hot-shot would be back in the fold for the Ulster Championship clash with Armagh in mid-April.

“He is going away. This is something that was planned before the season. He is going to Australia for a month. A lot of inter-county players go away at different times.

“When he is in form like that we would rather see him staying about but in fairness to Darragh he has been on the treadmill a good while. He has picked up a few injuries along the way so hopefully the bit of a break will do him good. He will come back refreshed and ready to go.

“ You see there today it means a lot to him to out on that Tyrone jersey. But he will be back for the Championship.”

The omens looked bleak for Tyrone at the outset yesterday as they fell 1-2 to 0-1 in arrears in the first five minutes, but after that they dominated for the most part, Brian Kennedy and Matthew Donnelly the goalscorers.

O’Rourke reflected: “We started off poorly and got ourselves into a hole early on. But the boys responded well to it and I thought we got better in the game as we went along. In fairness a number of the lads have been only back doing full training this last few weeks.

“We always knew the two weeks between the Derry match and today would be very beneficial to us and that’s how it proved.

“But I thought we played some really good football and gelled well as a team. So that was pleasing and it was good to get the two points.”

O’Rourke stated that Tyrone had used the mini fortnight break to iron out the mistakes in their game

“In the two weeks since the Derry game we got working on a lot of stuff. It was much better but we know we have an awful lot of stuff to do.

“We have a week now to prepare for Louth down in Ardee which is going to be another really tough game but at least getting the two points today is a good starting point.

“The boys were disappointed only to have one point from our first two games but we knew there was no easy game in this Division so on our home ground we had to be ready for this game.

“Cavan in fairness had been unlucky in their first two games so they were coming hunting for the points as well. Overall we were pleased with how the boys applied themselves. We showed a good level of workrate and played some good football as well.”