By Barry O’Donnell

MATCHES against the likes of Offaly and Louth may await Tyrone in early 2026 after they lost their place at the top table with relegation last weekend from Division One, but a defiant Mattie Donnelly insists that the county remain contenders no matter where they are plying their trade in league football.

The side at least went down fighting, securing two victories and a draw from their last three outings, the most recent an emphatic seven-point win over Dublin on Sunday at O’Neills Healy Park.

However with their fate lying in the hands of others, Tyrone were unable to curry a favour elsewhere on a frantic day of deliberations, and their destiny was sealed.

On paper it’s not the ideal scenario heading into the championship but Donnelly believes that the side can take momentum from their results in March.

“Yeah, the results were very positive against three top teams. The earlier form and results came home to cost us, but we’ve shown a good ability to learn from those games and improve from those games and that’s a massive trait to have, particularly when you’re going into championship football.

“People do learn week-on-week and game-on-game, so it’s very much taking that template into the coming weeks and months.

“We have the personnel, we’re trending in the right direction and we’re becoming more cohesive, but we have a lot of work to do as well to get to the level of the top tier teams, so we’ll do that over the coming weeks.”

No matter the sport the dreaded ‘R’ word is always something every team is keen to avoid, but even with their relegation, Donnelly feels that recent history suggest they remain livewire contenders now come the championship.

“It’s (relegation) not as big a deal, maybe, as in previous years.

“Obviously, you want to stay in Division One, but we’re still going to be contenders no matter what division we’re in. 100 per cent.

“We’ve seen the evidence is there over the last few years. Teams that have gone down have still been able to have a big say in the championship as well and develop different features of their game, different players, different age groups, so it’s definitely not as bleak an output as it was.

“Because of the quality and the depth of quality across the country now, there’s not that big a gap between the top of Division Two and the top of Division One.

“We started out to be in Division One, we want to be in Division One. That’s the level you want to be at. We’ll take encouragement from the last few weeks and last few performances and try and carry that into the weeks and months ahead.”