By Michael Devlin

The summer of 2008. Where have those ten years gone?

It’s been a decade since Tyrone’s last All-Ireland semi-final win, and indeed, their last Sam Maguire triumph.

A gutsy Wexford side turned up to Croke Park on Sunday August 31st as stark underdogs, and they looked destined to fall to a heavy defeat to Mickey Harte’s men. Going in at half-time 0-14 to 0-6 behind, the loss of the talismanic Matty Forde to injury worsened matters for the Model County.

Instead, Jason Ryan’s courageous company threw caution to the wind and battled their way back to cut the gap to two, only for Tyrone to dust themselves down in the closing stages. A cataclysmic collapse was simply not on the cards for the 2003 and 2005 champions.

In the end the Red Hands’ winning score-line was 0-23 to 1-14, Tyrone advanced to their third final in six years, and the rest is history.

Tyrone’s ship was steadied in part by Brian McGuigan, who was introduced with 20 minutes remaining to pull the strings in the forward line as he so often did in those halcyon days. By all accounts, McGuigan shouldn’t even have been on the field.

The playmaker was ruled out of the All-Ireland champions’ title defence after suffering a horrific broken leg while playing for his club Ardboe in May 2006. A freak accidental collision during a league game with Dromore left his fibula and tibula shattered, robbing Tyrone of one of their very best players so close to the start of the Championship season.

The 2006 season came and went, Tyrone losing their grip on Sam after limping to a second round qualifier defeat to Laois. McGuigan, meanwhile, was on the road to recovery and back playing for Ardboe with a 2007 comeback on his mind. However in May of that year came another, more gruesome blow.

In an innocuous club challenge game, McGuigan suffered a four inch gash on his eye-lid that nearly claimed his eyesight. Temporarily blinded in one eye for weeks, he underwent a series of pain-staking operations at Belfast’s Royal Victoria Hospital. The injury not only threatened his footballing career, but his very way of life.

Despite the danger of long-term damage, McGuigan recovered well and pulled on the Tyrone jersey once again in March 2008 in a league game with Laois.

“It never looked as if I’d ever play for my club again, never mind Tyrone. To go a step further and be there when we won it in 2008, it was a miracle," McGuigan told GAA.ie

“It was a bit of a stop-start year personally. I was in the feel of things at the start and through the league. Then Mickey started me for the first Championship game that year against Down, and I got injured and missed that replay.

“It was over two years since I’d actually played Championship football with Tyrone, and as the games went on, people talk about how tough that back-door run was, it helped me as it got me into the feel of the ball and up to the pace of county football. By the semi-final stage I was starting to feel good after beating Dublin on that rainy day in Croke Park, but just before the semi-final against Wexford I got a twinge in my hamstring.

“Mickey thought it was best to hold me back if he didn’t need me, I’d be good for the final, but as it turns out Wexford got a goal and a few points and got close to us. I was brought on last 20 minutes and we got over the line.

“Preparing for the final, I knew it would be touch-and-go whether I’d be starting because Marty Penrose had come in and did a good job. The way the game was going at that time, Mickey felt that we needed a few finishers. I totally accepted the decision, it was the right call to make because I felt I came on that day and made a contribution to the match.

“It was great to be involved, and if I was looking back to when that final whistle went, and where I was a year earlier, it was night and day in the difference. Me, lying on a bed trying to get my eyesight back to lifting the Sam Maguire a year later. Those were great times.”

2008 taught Brian McGuigan the value of being a game-changer, a player you can bring in to pull a team over the line when a game is in the melting pot. It’s something that has been one of the key facets of the current Tyrone team’s performances.

Second-half substitutes contributed 0-4 of their 0-14 against Dublin, while replacements scored 2-5 to turn the tide against Donegal in Ballybofey last Sunday. That impetus coming off the bench will be crucial again in tomorrow’s clash with Monaghan.

“They’ve found their best team, maybe not starting-wise, but they’ve got the right balance between who should be starting and who should be coming on. A lot of the players coming on are well fit and able to start the game, but the way the game has went, you need a strong team to finish it.

“When I was finishing up I accepted I was going to be a sub, and if you look at the subs Tyrone have at the minute, they are accepting it and that all comes with winning.

“If you take the first Championship game against Monaghan in Omagh, you just have to look at the reaction of Ronan O’Neill coming off that day. Now he and the likes of Kieran McGeary and Lee Brennan are accepting that it’s a 21 man game. They will need to be called upon and are just as important as the people who are starting.”

In the ten years since Tyrone last made it to the ultimate day in the county football calendar, there have been four defeats at the semi-final stage. A back-to-back bid was scuppered by Cork in 2009, while there were also losses in 2013, 2015 and 2017 to Mayo, Kerry and Dublin respectively.

“Monaghan’s big stumbling block was All-Ireland quarter-finals, and they got over that the last day," said McGuigan. "This current Tyrone team haven’t got over the semi-final stage. Both these teams will be looking at it as a great opportunity to get to a final. If you had have given it to them at the start of the year, they would have taken it no bother.”

McGuigan argues though there has been no drastic rethink in Tyrone’s tactics in the wake of those defeats, and he believes it’s that consistent running game that will see Harte’s men prevail tomorrow and make it to Tyrone’s sixth ever All-Ireland final.

“Whenver we’re winning, people automatically think Mickey has changed his style. I can assure you, Mickey is playing the exact same way that he’s done since 2015.

“The abuse that maybe the Tyrone system got after last year, the system hasn’t changed one bit, maybe just with personnel. One example in Ballybofey, Connor McAliskey was in the corner and he was chasing back up and down the field. The only man staying up was Richie Donnelly, and when you look at last year, only Mark Bradley stayed up, so we really only are playing the same way.

“When we get to Croke Park, the big wide open spaces do tend to help Tyrone and especially the way they play. I’ve no doubt it will follow the same pattern as they did in Omagh and in Ballybofey against Donegal. The first half is just going to be a chess match and it’ll just be shadow boxing and trying to wear the opponents down.

“In the second half, just open them up completely like we saw against Donegal, and if it does come down to that it’ll be about the conditioning of the players and how well they adapt to the wide open spaces of Croke Park. The Tyrone forwards will relish it, especially the running game of Niall Sludden and Mattie Donnelly.

“Any team playing Tyrone, the two defeats [against Monaghan and Dublin] especially, the three men that were pinpointed were Sludden, Donnelly and Peter Harte. I think they’ll be picked up again this weekend, but the Tyrone players might be a bit cuter this time and will have learned from the first day.

“In Omagh, Conor McManus wasn’t really in the game until the last ten minutes. I think we dealt with him okay. Ryan McAnespie and Conor McCarthy have come out and worked as link men, and they do seem to try and play with a lot of width from watching them against Galway.

“I know Monaghan have already beat Tyrone this year, but I think with the Croke Park factor and with Tyrone now knowing who their best team is to start and finish games, I can’t see anything other than a Tyrone victory. I think it will be a comfortable enough victory, maybe four or five points in it.”

So where have those ten years since 2008 gone?

“It’s definitely gone in quick, a lot has happened in between,” reflects McGuigan. “Looking at the Tyrone setup though, it’s a credit to Mickey Harte that when you speak about from 2003 to 2008 and on up to now, you wonder how he does it?

“I remember being involved with Tyrone minors several years ago and that was so time consuming, and it was just minors. The fact Mickey has been doing it since ’03 is amazing.

“Everybody’s coming out now across the board, about the amount of abuse managers get, and Mickey Harte has got it since then and he’s still there with a drive to try and win another All-Ireland.

“I believe if he wins this one, it’ll be right up there way ahead of the other three he’s already got as his greatest achievement.”