By Niall Gartland

TYRONE defender Aidan Clarke was among those to impress in their opening night win over Derry, and he very much welcomes the heightened sense of competition with the return of some familiar faces to the panel in recent months.

Two All-Ireland SFC winners of 2021 who later left the panel – Rory Brennan and Peter Teague – have now rejoined the squad and both featured in the first competitive encounter of the Malachy O’Rourke years.

Teague started from the word go and was on hand to fire in a crucial second-goal that set the impetus for Tyrone’s strong finish against the Oak Leafers, while Rory Brennan, who captained Trillick to the 2023 Tyrone Senior Championship title, was brought on as a sub and also made a positive impression.

Omagh native Aidan Clarke is developing into an important player in the heart of the Tyrone defence, but it’s a squad game and he considers that the return of experienced heads like Teague and Brennan will be to the betterment of all involved.

“ Any good squad has serious depth and competition. It wouldn’t be right if you were in easy, there’s plenty of battling throughout the paces.

“ It’s great that those lads are about the place and it’s the same throughout the team, there’s plenty of lads putting their hands up and that benefits everybody.”

With the shelving of the pre-season competitions, there was an especially long wait for the intercounty season to come round, so Clarke and the rest of the team were raring for action last weekend, and that was evident in the quality and energy of their performance. The string of challenge games were useful but still, it wasn’t exactly the real thing.

“Listen, it’s been a long wait for us boys, we were ready to get back at it. We’ve trained hard and really targeted that first game as we know how important it is to get off to a good start, so we’re just glad to have got the two points.”

“You never fully know where you stand until you get out and play in the league. It’s good to try different things in friendlies and they were definitely useful for us in terms of bringing whatever works into the league.”

Standing in Tyrone’s way of back-to-back victories is an Armagh team smarting after a disappointing six-point defeat to Galway last weekend. Niall Grimley is unavailable having been sent off against Galway on a straight red, while Kieran McGeeney confirmed that Rian O’Neill, another automatic starter in normal circumstances, is currently out of commission. Still though, a wounded animal is a dangerous one and Clarke is expecting an Armagh backlast.

“ I’m sure after winning the All-Ireland they’ll want to stay at the top and after losing to Galway, they’ll want to put that right.

” You want to play the best teams in the country and they won the All-Ireland and that speaks for itself, but at the same time we won’t approach it any differently, we’ll focus on ourselves.”

There’s less of a safety net at the back with the introduction of the new rules put forward by the Football Review Committee, but Clarke doesn’t have a problem with traditional man-on-man defending, and adds that it isn’t as if it’s a total throwback either.

“It definitely speeds up the game. Personally I’m enjoying it, there’s a lot more one v ones all around the pitch, so it’s good that way. If it’s a slow attack, you still have a lot of bodies back, but if that fast attack is on, you really have to be on your game in defence.”