THE AFTERMATH OF Tyrone’s All-Ireland semi-final defeat was tinged with sadness as Sean Cavanagh confirmed it was his final appearance for the county.
The 2008 Footballer of the Year decided to give it one more year in 2017 but today’s defeat to Dublin brought down the curtain on his legendary career.
He holds the highest number of appearances for an outfield player with 89, one ahead of Kerry brothers Tomas Ó Sé and Marc Ó Sé.
The 34-year-old spent some time on the field with his family after the final whistle and later tweeted his thanks to the GAA shortly after the game.
“My incredible journey ends. Blessed to have shared the highs & lows of our game with some amazing Gaels,” Cavanagh wrote.
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Cavanagh has been a permanent fixture in the Tyrone team since making his debut a year out of minor in 2002. Mickey Harte took charge the following season and they lifted three All-Ireland titles side-by-side, becoming one of the iconic duos in the GAA along the way.
“Sean Cavanagh is with these Tyrone seniors as long as I am, and he was a faithful servant,” said Harte after the game.
“He gave so much, he has so many accolades to prove his value across many, many spectres of awards. He has nothing to regret really, he gave it all he had.
“We were hoping that he would get another day before he finished his career, we haven’t been able to provide that for him, but I don’t think he’ll walk away with many regrets.
“There’s not many players will leave the game of Gaelic football with all that he has achieved, particularly not in Tyrone anyway.”
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I live in England. Watched the game in a packed pub. They cheered and sung football’s coming home and then went about their business. I can honestly say the fans are not getting carried away. The media, they just can’t help themselves.
Also possible that they’ve just had a very kind run of fixtures.
@Sean Moore: they have had a nice run of fixtures but why would anyone care.
@Sean Moore: hasn’t stopped England getting knocked out in the past which is kind of the point.
Like them or not the the English football league is arguably the best football league in the world what’s surprising is that it’s been 28 years since their last semi final on the world cup
@Jim: it’s still a technically inferior and grossly overated domestic league in my opinion, but a very well drilled and organised current national team.
@Jim: It is a good league but its not down to English players, italian; spanish, dutch, french etc, make it the league it is
j
No way they’ll beat Croatia
@Cathal: Ir France. Or Belgium.
Its not coming home. Finito.
Everyone seems to know he score we’ve seen this all before England gonna throw it away.
Good luck to them- playing as a team no egos.
Unlike Slippy, Rio, Carra, JT et al. They are all the experts now. No wonder Scholes walked away .
Englands golden generation failed due to previous coaches believing they could play other teams off the park with attacking football. This was a huge mistake. The likes of Beckham, Gerrard and Lampard were all amazing players but never had the technical ability to to play the tika taka of Spain or the disciplined attacking tactics of say Germany. Southgate has been brilliant as he has done a Mourinho where he has made them ultra defensive while also picking lesser names based on their speed, energy and work rate over their reputation so you have players like Lingard, Delph, Loftus-Cheek, Pickford getting chosen ahead of Jack Wilshire, Rooney, Walcott, Hart etc.
I’ve no doubt England’s golden generation would have cruised to WC semi finals also had a manager like Mourinho been in charge.