Joe Brolly loves Tyrone.
Honestly. He says so himself in his Sunday Independent column: “any previous remarks in the subject have been taken out of context.”
The Derry man might have an agenda the odd time, he might get carried away in the entertainment of it all and he might even talk some nonsense, but when he focuses purely on football and dissects it, it’s hard to argue that he is a keen eye.
In Brolly’s defence, he was the one pundit championing Mickey Harte’s Tyrone throughout their most successful period between 2003 and 2008 that brought three All-Irelands to the Red Hand county. He was the one defending their approach. He was the one even marvelling in their rise.
It’s 2016 and, whilst the Dungiven native has had plenty of tiffs with the same team since, he is so impressed with “born-again Tyrone” that he genuinely thinks they can win Sam again. And Colm Cavanagh? Well, he just can’t speak highly enough of him.
Brolly was in attendance at Healy Park on Saturday night when Tyrone saw off Derry for a third time this year already. It was the most comfortable of their clashes for Mickey Harte and it makes for grim reading for the Oak Leafers who host Tyrone in the championship opener this summer.
“We were simply reacting to Tyrone,” Brolly wrote in the Sunday Independent. “Hoping for the best isn’t much of a plan. It is no plan at all against this Tyrone team, who are beginning to look like All-Ireland material.
“Their defence is probably the best I have seen. Goals are more or less impossible. The phalanx young coach Peter Donnelly has created, starting with the qualifiers last season, is soul destroying for the opposition. And as a sweeper, Colm Cavanagh could guard the gates of hell itself. On Saturday, he was magnificent. Even awesome.
“The first thing to note about Colm is that he is a brilliant physical specimen. Or as a Castlederg man behind me put it, ‘A baste’. Secondly, he has superb positional sense. He also has absolute courage and puts his body on the line without hesitation. Finally, his work-rate is enormous.
“Tyrone have the potential to beat either Kerry or Dublin on the big day. The defensive work is done. The obsession at training must now be attack, attack, attack. They are down to the fine margins now and it is clear they are going to be a major force in late summer.”
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