By Niall Gartland

TYRONE ladies manager Darren McCann believes they’re coming up against an “underestimated” Waterford team in their fifth round league encounter which will be played on home turf this Sunday.

The Deise have won one of their four matches to date – the same as Tyrone in that respect – but McCann cites some of their recent performances as evidence that it’s set to be another tough encounter for the Red Hands.

When they played All-Ireland champions Kerry a fortnight ago, Waterford did supremely well and lost by three points, while it was a similar story against Meath, a goal differential between the two teams.

While Tyrone acquitted themselves extremely well in their own league games against heavy-hitters Kerry and Meath to date, they haven’t come quite so close to upsetting the odds, so their manager McCann cautions against talk that this is a very winnable game for Tyrone.

He said: “Waterford probably should have beaten Kerry, they pushed them all the way, and it was the same against Meath. Waterford are one of the top teams in Division One even if the results haven’t gone their way, and we’re not taking them lightly – they’re a seasoned senior team.”

Tyrone gave a good account of themselves on a difficult day weather-wise against Kerry on Sunday, losing out by 4-5 to 1-7 on the 3G pitch at Garvaghey. The game had been scheduled to take place at O’Neill’s Healy Park, but was switched to the Tyrone GAA Centre at the final hour after a pitch inspection conducted by referee Maggie Farrelly.

A bit of upheaval yes, and the blustery conditions made life difficult, but McCann says neither team was advantaged on that score.

“The weather was the same for both teams, it wasn’t ideal, we were all down in Omagh and everybody had set up, but I think both sets of players deserve a lot of credit.

“It was a hell of a game given the windy conditions. It was the same for both teams, we were ready wherever it was going to be played.”

Four goals, a couple of which came from speculative effort at points, made the difference on the day for a vaunted Kerry team. Tyrone had the wind advantage after the break and had plenty of possession but couldn’t quite conjure up enough chances to have any chance of a comeback.

Their manager says that’s something they’ll try to learn from.

“In the second half we were trying the eye of the needle pass at times, probably thinking we needed to get goals but when the most important thing was possibly keeping the scoreboard ticking over.

“That’s where we didn’t help ourselves I suppose and we need to look at that, it’s another learning experience for us.

“Kerry lived off those goals they got, but I can’t fault our girls’ effort, they put in an incredible shift.”