Canavan on Tyrone: 'A bit of soul searching required'
Tyrone great Peter Canavan fears his county are suffering from low confidence after underestimating how tough life in Division 2 would be as he ruled out their chances of promotion this year.
Malachy O'Rourke's team fell to a five-point loss at Louth last Sunday, leaving them with one victory and a draw from their four matches to date.
They take on Offaly in Omagh on Saturday, then travel to Meath and finish off their league campaign with a home clash against Cork.
Tyrone will face into that block without top scorer Darragh Canavan - Peter's son - who leaves this week for a month of travelling in Australia. It's going to be a tough, challenging few weeks.
"Definitely the chance of promotion is gone," Peter Canavan told the RTÉ GAA Podcast.
"When you look at Cork on eight (points), Meath and Derry on six (point)... two of those three will definitely go through.
"(Tyrone) have to win against Offaly, otherwise they could be in serious relegation trouble. If they beat Offaly it's them on five points.
"From a Tyrone perspective, there's a few people getting carried away with the result (against Louth).
"The fact of the matter is Tyrone had the winning of the game in their hands. They'd a decent first half and with ten, 15 minutes to go they were very much in the game with a strong breeze.
"What's worrying from Malachy's point of view is of the four games they've played to date, going into the last seven or eight minutes in three of those games it was up for grabs. And in those three games they didn't see the game out, they didn't win it. That's very disappointing from a number of counts."
Tyrone beat Derry, Dublin and Donegal in Division 1 last year, despite ultimately suffering relegation. They also made it to the last four of the All-Ireland SFC, losing to Kerry in the semis.
They'd have entered Division 2 confident of coming straight back up, but things have not panned out as Tyrone would have hoped.
"I would say confidence in the squad looked to be very low in the second half on Sunday," added Canavan
"There was one example which I thought summed up the lack of confidence in each other. With about 15 minutes to go, Tyrone playing with a gale force breeze, we were only two or thee points down, still very much in the game, we'd a sideline free about 65 yards out.
"Instead of working it short, they called up Niall Morgan. Now I would say in the heavy underfoot conditions, it would have been a miraculous kick for Niall to score it. They felt the need to call him up, waste a minute or two and not have the confidence to try and work it short, make sure and kick it dead or to get a score.
"So things could be much better. After saying that, I don't think people give Louth the credit they deserve. They're Leinster champions. If Tyrone were to go down to play any other team in Leinster that was Leister champions, it wouldn't be such a shock that they got beat.
"Louth played well under Mickey (Harte), they obviously played very well under Ger Brennan, and now they're playing well under 'Horse' (Gavin Devlin). It tells you there's some very good players there, some excellent players there, and those players came to the fore once again.
"They have a good team and a lot of teams will find it difficult to beat them, but from a Tyrone perspective there's a bit of soul searching required. They need to start playing better as a team."
Expanding on what Tyrone have to change in terms of mindset, Canavan said: "We had some good wins in Division 1 at the end of the year and we got to an All-Ireland semi-final, put it up to Kerry for 45, 50 minutes. That you wouldn't say is Division 2 form.
"There was probably a feeling of, this will be a case of going down and coming straight back up again. But maybe a few players on the team are realising, maybe they're not as good as they think they are, and you can't take any teams for granted. They're finding that out the hard way."
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