McCann: Tyrone Ladies’ main focus is on championship

By Shaun Casey

THE next two weeks will tell the tale for Tyrone ladies in terms of their Division One status as they take on Dublin and Kildare but no matter what happens their main focus has always been the championship says boss Darren McCann.

The Red Hand ladies are currently second from bottom with one win on the board, coming against bottom placed Mayo. This weekend’s opponents Dublin sit just two places above McCann’s side with seven points to show for their efforts.

A defeat on Sunday to the Dubs could see Tyrone make an immediate return to Division Two, if Kildare get one over Mayo this weekend. “It’s as massive two weeks ahead,” said McCann in his first season in charge.

“Any chance you get to host Dublin, serial All-Ireland winners, it’s a fantastic opportunity for our girls to go up against some of the best ladies footballers in the country and they’ve been fortunate enough to do that in Division One.

“We have Dublin this week and then Kildare the following week so we know what’s at stake but we’re looking to get a performance in the next two games and whatever happens after that happens.

“We made no bones about it, the championship is our main prerogative. These next two games are a perfect building blocks for us going into the championship in April. Obviously it would be great to stay up and we don’t want to go down.

“The reality is that we want to get performances and take learnings from each game and I feel like in 90% of the games so far we have done that. We’ve been good in patches and times and we’ve taken a lot of learnings away.”

Tyrone will have home advantage on Saturday afternoon and that provides McCann’s team with a chance to improve their recent record. “We’ve had three home games so far and unfortunately we haven’t won any of them,” he added.

“I suppose the big thing there is that our venues have never been set in stone, we had the upheaval with the Kerry game where the weather played havoc with it.

“It’s great to be playing at home and in front of your home supporters but it’s nice to get away too. That bond of togetherness on a bus journey sometimes can galvanise you more and our best performance this year so far was against Mayo and it was an away trip.”