By Barry O’Donnell

THE prolonged six-week break will hopefully provide Tyrone with a clean bill of health on the injury front heading into Sunday’s crunch showdown with Roscommon, manager Malachy O’Rourke affirms.

The Red Hands were last in action on Sunday, April 12 when losing out to Armagh in the Ulster Championship preliminary round, and during the course of that heartbreaking extra time defeat they also lost the services to two pivotal figures in ace attacker Darragh Canavan and team skipper Brian Kennedy, who both had to leave the fray hurt in the first half.

O’Rourke hopes that the intervening period served a useful purpose in helping nurse some key men back to full fitness, though Canavan still remains a doubt for Hyde Park.

“Brian had a knee injury and we feared it might be more serious but thankfully it wasn’t and after two or three weeks he was back on the field training.

“Darragh is taking a bit longer, the hip flexor was damaged. There is no short cuts with that sort of injury. We have a great medical team who are working hard with him but we just have to be patient. Hopefully all the boys with knocks are going in the right direction and won’t be far away.”

While the early exit from the provincial series was an obvious blow for the Tyrone camp, O’Rourke hopes that in the long terms it works in their favour, though he concedes that it is hard to beat regular competitive action either.

“To be honest with the amount of injuries we had it was probably a good thing to have the six week break. We needed it to try and get lads recovered and back out again training.

“If we had been playing the following week or two after Armagh the team would have been changed a lot because of the number unavailable for selection.

“Injuries are always going to be par for the course but with the club season not starting we have had unlimited access to the boys and used the time to get them back to fitness.

“The other way of looking at it though is after a six week break you are coming in cold a bit and don’t really know where you stand. But we will get a good idea of that answer on Sunday at Hyde Park.”