By Niall Gartland

EMERGING unscathed from the All-Ireland Senior Championship relegation series is absolutely crucial to the development of Tyrone Ladies football, according to Tyrone ladies skipper Aoibhinn McHugh.

To put it simply, Tyrone have two cracks at this. If they account for Tipperary at Mullingar this Saturday, it will be a case of job done and they’ll play Senior Championship football in 2027.

If they fall short, all isn’t lost, and they’ll face a crunch tie against the losers of this weekend’s other relegation play-off clash between Waterford and Donegal.

So they’ll have a second bite of the cherry if needs be but that wasn’t of much consolation to Aoibhinn McHugh in the direct aftermath of their recent defeat to Meath, as competitive as it was. That narrow loss spelt the end of their All-Ireland ambitions and McHugh was visibly disappointed after the game that they didn’t seal a place in the quarter-finals at Meath’s expense.

“Yeah, it’s a disappointing one. Look, Meath are obviously a good team, an established senior team. It’s disappointing, but we’ll have to pick ourselves up and get ourselves right to go again.”

Still, it was an improved performance from their other group stage match, where they felt the full force of a talented Galway side at Tuam.

“Galway are also a strong team. We’ve plenty to work on. We made plenty of mistakes and Galway punished us, and that’s what senior teams tend to do – they punish you. We played a bit better against Meath, but we still made too many mistakes and maybe left it behind us a little bit in the end.”

This weekend’s opponents Tipperary came out second best in the group stages against Kildare and Kerry. Tyrone will be quietly confident that they can edge the contest and therefore stave off relegation at the first time of asking, and McHugh is hopeful that there are good days ahead for the Tyrone ladies further down the line. For now though, it’s all about avoiding the unthinkable prospect of relegation.

“It’s fine margins at this level, but we have to go again and that’s our aim. We want to stay in senior football.”

“Look, we’re going in the right direction and we’re learning loads. We learned loads last year and hopefully we’re heading in the right direction. It’s probably important now to keep that progress going.”