By Barry O’Donnell

BULLISH Tyrone joint manager Brian Dooher has full confidence that his under-fire troops still possess the ‘drive and ambition’ to salvage their season.

The Red Hands venture into the Athletic Grounds on Sunday for a blockbuster All-Ireland Qualifier tie against Armagh desperate to avoid an ignominious end to their reign as champions in the first few days of summer.

Brickbats have been aimed towards the squad at Garvaghey from all quarters ever since the shock capitulation at the hands of Derry last time out.

However dismissing the criticism as ‘outside noise’ Dooher has jumped to the defence of his players, arguing that they have the character and determination to get their campaign back on course this weekend.

“Everybody has an opinion, and you’re not sure who’s right or who’s wrong sometimes, but we’ll see what happens.

“To be honest, the only people we’re worried about are the people we see up in Garvaghey every week at training, and that’s the most important group.

“There’s a lot of noise going on outside, around that, but you have to separate yourselves from that. The people that matter are the people up here.”

The two times All-Ireland winning captain insists that proving the doubters wrong is a negative mindset for any team to adopt.

“You can’t rely on that sort of motivation, that somebody has to say something bad before you get going. That’s not going to work, or it’s going to be very short-term.

“These boys have a drive and an ambition in themselves internally, which keeps them going, a desire to be better every day they go out. And I suppose that’s the big thing, they want to get better every day they go out.

“I think that’s the big driver, to prove to themselves how good they can be, as opposed to anybody else.”

Having overseen training sessions in the weeks subsequent to the Oak Leaf loss, Dooher is hopeful that there will be a significant upturn in Tyrone’s display against the Orchard men.

“Some days things don’t happen to you, players don’t turn up with their best game and that happens. It happens every footballer, and it just happened to too many of us on the same day.

“They have worked hard over the last two or three weeks, they have done everything we have asked over the last two or three weeks, so you hope now that you can just carry that on to the pitch next weekend.”

Yet Dooher acknowledges that vast improvement is required in many facets of the Red Hands game if there are to enjoy another protratcted summer Championship voyage.

“If you don’t bring your workrate and intensity to the game, you’re always going to struggle.

“Derry worked a lot harder than us, they were more intense, they really wanted the game a lot more, and that showed in the match.

“You have to earn the right to play football, and that’s through hard work, and we just didn’t work hard enough, I thought and most of our players would agree with that.

“It’s disappointing to be beat. We have dusted ourselves down, got back training again. we’ll see where we are, we want to pick up on things that we didn’t do well and improve on that, bring some learning from the Derry game and bring it in to the Armagh game.”

One aspect of their game which has been a subject of debate is ill-discipline with two more Tyrone men receiving their marching orders against Derry, adding to the litanty of red cards flashed in 2022. Dooher appreciates that the players must clean up their act heading into the lion’s den at the Athletic Grounds.

“You don’t go out with the intention of getting boys sent off. The players themselves will be far from happy, never mind ourselves, but it is what it is, we have moved on.

“We had a harsh lesson, unfortunately and you hope you have learned from it. We have had too many in the year, you can’t argue with that, more than you would like.”