Ulster Championship preliminary round

Tyrone v Fermanagh

Saturday, Brewster Park, 6.30pm

By Barry O’Donnell

TYRONE may be raging hot favourites to launch their Ulster and All-Ireland Championship defence with victory at Brewster Park on Saturday but as far as joint manager Feargal Logan is concerned ‘all bets are off’.

The Red Hands head for their Easter Saturday engagement with rank outsiders Fermanagh desperate to avoid one huge “egg on their face” if they were to emerge on the wrong end of a monumental shock.

While the ultimate objective for the team this season is the retention of the All-Ireland title, and putting together back-to-back Sam Maguire triumphs for the first time in the county’s history, Logan is refusing to look beyond stage one of that journey this weekend. History has taught him to tread warily.

Back in 1986, Tyrone’s first All-Ireland, Antrim had them beaten in Casement Park the next year in the first round, and it took an equalising point at the death of it by Iggy Gallagher to get a draw.

“That’s where my memories start of All-Irelands and playing in the first round of Ulster.

“So on that basis, and on every other basis, it’s well set up for them (Fermanagh). They have a go at this, and people will be slow to criticise them if they didn’t beat Tyrone, but who knows?”

If Tyrone are to embark on another memorable odysssey this spring and summer then it will entail a marathon voyage, as they are pitched straight into preliminary round action on the opening Championship weekend.

However Logan isn’t too fazed about his side being first onto centre stage, as others livewire contenders wait to make their entrance in the coming weeks.

“One analysis is that the less hurdles you have to jump, the better, and last year we had five to jump. This year, even if you went straight through it, that makes it six.

“Now that’s a very crude analysis of it, but the flip side of that is, yes, it focuses us quickly and it gets us up and running early.

“But sometimes you like to sit and watch other teams, and get a look at the opposition and the like, so it’s hard to know how to read it.

“But it has got us focused quickly out of the League, and I hope that it stands to us. It stands to us if you win, but if you go the other way, it’s a very early bath.”

Tyrone shocked many observers last year by annexing ‘Sam’ and seeing off fancied rivals like Donegal, Monaghan, Kerry and Mayo in the process. Logan appreciates however that particular role has flipped this year with his team now the hunted rather than the hunters.

“It’s one you have got to exercise caution with. One big play can make it or break it, one referee’s decision, so it’s one that everybody needs to exercise serious caution with.

“They’re sitting on their own patch. We played them in a friendly up there last year, and it was very, very tight.

“Fermanagh have a good set of players, they had a club in the Ulster Club final this year, they have won Hogan Cups, they have under-age success coming through their ranks, so listen, it would be a foolish team, let alone their neighbours, that wouldn’t give them the proper respect.”

And Logan warns that his Erne managerial counterpart Kieran Donnelly is also well up to speed on the qualities of the Tyrone squad given his teaching role at Omagh CBS, where he has coached numerous MacRory Cup panels down the years.

“Kieran is well familiar with Tyrone football. Rory Brennan was captain of a team that went to the Hogan Cup final, so between west Tyrone and Fermanagh, there was always neighbourly relations. The Donnellys and the Trillick boys are all connected through it too. It makes for a good start to the Championship, and let’s hope it works out for Tyrone.”

And with the whole Championship now shoehorned into a short window (the All-Ireland Final is pencilled in for mid-July) Logan said every county will be braced for a harum-scarum ride.

“It’s every two weeks, and there’s not much provision for replays, until you get right to the end of it. It just about gives you enough time to get boys back up to speed, but everybody is in the same boat this year.”