By Shaun Casey

FOR the first time this season, Tyrone find themselves marching into a league game off the back of a defeat and Darren McCann’s Red Hand ladies will be aiming to bounce back against Mayo on Sunday.

They were second best in the all-Ulster Division Two round three clash with Donegal, with the visiting side racing home to a 3-9 to 1-8 triumph at Aghyaran. It’s back to Healy Park, Omagh this weekend, where Tyrone will again have home advantage.

Last year’s All-Ireland Intermediate champions enjoyed early league success against Monaghan and Westmeath, but McCann understands the step up in class when facing opposition like Donegal and Mayo.

“It’s a massive game in a sense that we’re coming up against another senior side,” McCann said of Mayo’s visit on Sunday afternoon.

“Mayo have plenty of pedigree, history, tradition and they’re going well in the league too so it’s a great challenge. It’s one we’re looking forward to after the disappointment of the last game.

“It was a poor performance by us (the last day out). It was disappointing, we just weren’t at the races and Donegal were. Donegal being a senior side, if you’re not on your game, you’re not going to be in the game.

“We made a lot of mistakes so we’ve been working on those over the last three weeks and hopefully now on Sunday we can rectify a few of those mistakes and get a few things right.

“Ultimately, we want to see progression through every game so if we can do that, we won’t be far away but it’s another big challenge ahead of us.”

Tyrone showed their scoring potential during the early stages of the National League, bagging 11 goals across their opening two fixtures. They hit the net seven times against Monaghan and grabbed a further four versus Westmeath.

But McCann was fairly level-headed about their early success and understands that there’s a lot more football to be played throughout the course of the season.

“In the first two games, we were finding our feet in the league so I wouldn’t read an awful lot into it at this stage, we’re only three games in,” he continued. “Teams are only back at it, I can only speak for us, we were only back at it in the middle of December.

“You’re adjusting to the new rules and like I said from the outset at the start of the league, it’s going to take time. If you look at the men’s league with the new rules, it took time for teams to get used to them and system of play.

“Things have changed now with the three up and the solo and go, they’re big changes. They might seem small on the face of it, but they take a lot of getting used to and while we scored plenty in the first few games, we also conceded so that’s something we have to work on.”