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Richie Donnelly unlikely to be back.  Same as clubmate Rory Brennan, the best central defender in the county on current form.  Issue is the current management, specifically Dooher who (a bit like Roy Keane) was a brilliant player, and no doubt a great coach, but he's no man-manager, and, worse, he has favourites.  The county is no longer a major draw for lads from the Div 1 clubs in Tyrone anyway, as they will play a better brand of football at club level, and the quality of training and prep is nowadays indistinguishable from county.   

West of the Bann-ed - all part of a pattern:

- Nearly no universities (new Ulster campus at Coleraine, instead of the obvious larger Derry, long painful struggle to get Derry campus developed, only progressed from the 90s)

- Poor quality infrastructure (water pipes cheaper and badly maintained, as admitted by an engineer in a recent water shortage)

- Invest NI grants largely going East

- No piped gas

- No motorways

- No railways of the kind used by my parents and grandparents up to 1957 (who only had to cycle 2 miles to get a train to either Belfast or Dublin) - see: https://twitter.com/upthewoodenhill/status/1380807523754729478/photo/1

I always remember, as a small boy, in 1975, feeling slightly puzzled that the Loyalists blew up our nearly-completed new Catholic primary school.  How could you be threatened by a mere primary school, I thought, as I resigned myself to another year in the old dilapidated primary (where my grandparents had gone) with its outside dry toilets, rats under the floorboards, broken windows closed with cardboard, no sports facilities of any sort, no heating, no school meals etc etc.

But it was all part of a broader agenda.  Anything that looked like progress for them'uns had to be resisted at all costs.

As Edwin Poots' Dad, Charles Poots, made clear in 1975:

"If I was in control of this country, it would not be in the same state that it is in now.  I would cut off all supplies, including water and electricity, to Catholic areas.  And I would stop Catholics form getting social security.  It is the only way to deal with enemies of the state and to stamp out the present troubles."

Old ways die hard, folks.

Referee leant heavily to Dromore.  7.25pm Canavan clobbered after he had played the ball, nothing done - so much for the poster above saying a Canavan couldn't be touched, nonsense.  Ref brought Dromore into it with a series of soft decisions, I counted 8 of them throughout the game that were gifts.  Noteworthy that the Tyrone TV commentators only commented on soft decisions for Dromore – on 2 or 3 occasions, the commentators just admitted they were baffled as to what Dromore had got a free for.  Not good when you hear comments like: "not often you'd see them ones given" etc.  As for the comment about Errigal potentially caving on the home straight, I don't see that either – both teams fought well, and Dromore's persistence was of course exemplary, they're a very hard team to win against.  Though it may have been Dromore that had 3 or 4 nervy misses (wides and shorts) – 2 in the first quarter, 2 in the last quarter – though of course whether nerves or terrible conditions hard to say.   Overall, a very good game I thought – either team would have destroyed Clonoe and both teams attacked at pace and in numbers, Dromore number 8 was it – big lad who made a series of tremendous runs – was immense, and of course the 2 Canavan cubs just have that wee bit of extra finesse about how they hit a ball – sometimes, it's like watching the Dad.
Final, hard to say - Carrickmore will be on a roll, and they're a traditional team.  Very tight again I'd say. 

Standard of league football has dipped imo, maybe its people being away travelling but some teams seem very weak.

Errigal ticking along nicely

We are likely looking at Senior football being at its weakest it has been in a long time. Only two teams of genuine quality would be Trillick and Errigal. After a lot of teams could make a point for being the next best team - Dungannon, Killyclogher, Dromore. A lot of big teams are at a transition stage like Coalisland and Omagh and then a lot of the other teams are young and finding their feet like Carrickmore. I think its just the teams now aren't as strong as they were rather than Friday games causing a decline.

Finding our feet? We won the league last year, we've already beaten last years championship winners

I think the "weak" point may be a bit over-stated.  I bet you if you spoke to anyone from Errigal, they're not going around thinking everyone else they meet in the championship will be "weak"!  There is a difference between perceived player quality and results, in our championship anyway.  That all goes out the window come co c'ship time, most clubs feel they can beat anyone on the day, and every so called stronger team is very aware they can be nipped on the day also.  Also, the competitive nature of our club c'ship is a big factor in why our clubs traditionally underperform in the provincials.  It's such a battle to win the county that teams are spent when they win it; and also they simply don't care as much (too happy to have won the county - the attitude that everything else is a mere bonus); and finally any team needs a run at the provincials.  I know from speaking to people in Derrygonnelly that they were hammered in their first year in the provincial, and only started to become competitive in their second or third year at it, once the novelty of winning the county had worn off.  That suits counties where you have one team who is miles ahead of its opposition in the county, your Kilcoos, Derrygonnellys, Crossmaglens etc.  Tyrone isn't like that.  I remember Kilcoo guys saying how, at the start of their year, they set themselves a target of winning the Ulster and the All Ireland.  But if you tried that crack in a Tyrone club, you'd be shouted down for "losing focus" and for being an arrogant idiot - it would be seen as pie-in-the-sky thinking / unlucky, to chat about that before winning the county.  So what happens in Tyrone is a newbie team, very inexperienced in provincial terms, who has not paced themselves or timed their training for a provincial run, emerges, unprepared, already very pleased with themselves, after a heavy bout of celebrations, blinking in the headlights, and gets turned over by a grimly-determined team for another county, often a team who more or less expects to win their county and who will not be remotely satisfied by merely winning their county.  Until Tyrone becomes a county where one or at most 2 teams always win the county, we're sadly unlikely ever to do much outside the county.

It's not just in Derry city apparently where the local authority might be found wanting in providing council-owned GAA pitches for hire - I'm not sure about the Fermanagh part but the Tyrone part of the Fermanagh & Omagh DC doesn't really have much in the way of council-owned GAA playing fields. There's council owned GAA pitches in Dromore (at Crawford's Lane next door to Tummery Athletic's soccer pitch, though I think it's rarely used by the Dromore GAA club now), Trillick & Gortin. I know that there was one in Drumquin that was conveniently located next door to the GAA club that was in good use when Drumquin's main pitch was being done up - now the GAA club has bought the council field and are doing it up themselves. There's none in Omagh town itself. There used to be one in Fintona at Ecclesville Park in the early 90's that had wooden goalposts, but it had to make way for the development of the Ecclesville Centre and there's been no replacement since.

There is no council-owned GAA pitch in Trillick.  In fact, there is no council pitch of any kind in Trillick.  Never heard of one in Dromore either. 

By common consent, perhaps only 3 players in the running for captaincy - Harte, Donnelly, C Cavanagh.  A good captain has to be able to read people and communicate with people, not just be a good player.  Cavanagh is an excellent player, but three factors are against him: (1) he plays a high-energy style and is getting on.  Harte likes to get a few years out of his captains.  Cavanagh is getting to the end of his playing years.  (2) He has a short fuse.  More so than the other two and can always be guaranteed to pick up a card.  Saying that Donnelly should not have been capt for "ill discipline" and then opting for the short-tempered CK as some kind of level-headed saint is comical.  CK has one of the poorer discipline records on the Tyrone team.  I've seen Sean Cavanagh wrestling him away from incidents in games, realising that his younger brother was going to get booked.  (3) He's an introvert, not a natural communicator or someone who would naturally get onto other's players' wavelengths.  In that regard, he's the opposite of his outgoing and personable older brother.  There's more to motivating others than just playing well.  A good capt is a mix of football skills and people skills.  Donnelly is a fanatic about football and winning and comes from a long line of great football people who live for the game, and he's a pleasant lad off the pitch.  Obviously, as a mere 2 times all star, AI minor winner and O'Neill cup winner, he wouldn't be a good enough footballer to get onto bigdog's club or county team, but most rational people who don't have an axe to grind will accept that he's a good all round choice for the position.  So would Harte, obviously, but you can imagine the stick MH would have got if Peter had been appointed.  Cavanagh is a good player, and I wish that he was 6 years younger so we'd get more of him, but for the reasons outlined, despite his great on-field attitude, skills and energy, I don't see him as 100% capt material. 

Carter is from Liverpool; and, yes, it's his real name.  He now lives in Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh.  Seems like a decent enough lad, on a personal basis.  But you don't pick your musicians on the basis of how nice they are as people.  My late Dad was a hardcore trad fiddle player in the unaccompanied Donegal style and his view of cheesy Irish country was that it was "simple stuff - music for people who don't understand music".

The wider issue with much Irish country is that it isn't country.  Daniel O'Donnell had a big row years ago with English country music charts when the country fans in England tried to stop him being listed on country charts on the basis that he was a boring dinner jacketed crooner, not a real country singer. 

The new wave of cheesy so-called country is even more misleading.  It has little to do with country, either in its ethos or its delivery.  Very revealing that when Carter was asked who his biggest musical influence was, he said Michael Bublé.  Michael f***ing Bubble!  No harm to mr Bubble, but he is to country what I am to quantum physics, i.e., nothing.  No mention of Johnny Cash or The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band or, god help us, not even Joe Dolan or Big Tom.  In reality, these new country pretty boys are just cleancut, cissified, boyband pop crooners cynically wearing big hats to market themselves to a new culchie market. 

Compare the choirboy Nathan and his inane warblings with the style of a real new US country singer such as, e.g., Chris Stapleton - this is what a country singer should look like: http://www.billboard.com/files/styles/article_main_image/public/media/01-Chris-Stapleton-bb4-grammy-2016-billboard-1250.jpg
Hi songs titles show what a different world he lives in compared to saint Nathan - you won't hear Carter recording songs with titles like "Tennessee Whiskey", "Might as well get stoned" or "Death Row".

When I was a kid at school in Omagh in the late 70s through early 80s, all the young people formed their own punk / new wave bands.  There were "battles of the bands" off the back of a lorry in O'Kane Park using amps borrowed from parents who had been in showbands in the 50s; doing Joy Division, Sex Pistols, Damned and Capt Beefheart covers.  Country music beyond the pale.  It wasn't even worth laughing at.  Nobody, but nobody, was into it.   Some lads from my year from back then:
http://www.spitrecords.co.uk/excellerators.htm
http://www.spitrecords.co.uk/theproblems.htm
http://www.irishrock.org/irodb/bands/crocodile-omagh.html

There are two reasons why modern kids don't do cutting edge music any more and why they're into all this Carter rubbish that kids in the 70s and 80s would have laughed at:

- the death of nightclubs - traditional line dancing I'm sure is good crack, and if it comes packaged with naff new country music. reality is, lots of kids don't really care one way or another, as long as they get a shift

- the death of pop music as a mark of social identity.  TOTP is dead.  Modern kids define themselves through social media, not by which bands you like. Music is just background noise / another thing for kids nowadays, it's no longer a vital part of their identity like it was for my generation. 

- the stranglehold on pop music by simon cowbells, Louis walsh and other assorted a**holes.  in my time, music still had the potential to be rebellious / counter-cultural.  now it's just a bunch of crawlers on TV, crying and sucking up to simon cowbells.  modern mainstream pop is so boring (Adele ffs) that even Carter's rubbish doesn't seem much worse.

And on the narrow point re wagon wheel, yes, obviously, Carter completely misunderstands and makes a hames of the song.  Guy can hold a melody, but there's more to singing than that.  He can't interpret a song.  He's like a song destroyer, where no matter what decent song goes into the nathanatron, it all comes out the other end as the same upbeat, grinning, inane sh1te.  God help us all : )

All accents are grand - provided they're genuine.  Wannabe posh English accents - of the kind that you get in parts of South Dublin and in the well-heeled parts of the East Coast commuter towns outside Belfast - and wannabe mid Atlantic acents are not objectionable because they sound LA / Home Counties English, but because - to anyone who has lived in England or the US - they sound so desperately fake.  There's a bloke on Radio Ulster, Seamus or Conor something, who has long ago lost the ability to pronounce the letter 'r'.  You get a variant of this in S Dublin - 'Ah-T.E.' for 'RTE'.  A classic is when they say: 'Ah-TE suppowting the ahts' for 'RTE supporting the arts'.  And all those wannabe Home Counties Ulster Unionist blokes who take about 'Nawthn Ah-land' for 'Northern Ireland'; or 'the Island of Eye-land' for the 'Island of Ireland'.  When I lived in S Dublin, you'd hear Irish Dads saying to their kids, e.g.: 'Jack, get your coat'; and it sounded like: 'Jah-ak, get yoe cowt'.
 
There are 3 types of Dublin accent:
- West British - as above and see also:  http://d4accent.blogspot.co.uk/
- Brennan's Bread / old style Dubliner (a lovely warm accent with a full-blooded emphasis on individual sounds - e.g., 'time at the zoo' is delivered as 'toyum at the iz-you'
- kn**ker (whiny, aggressive, mouth mostly closed while speaking ): as an example of the latter, I once saw a kn**ker in a shop in Dublin asking an Asian shop assistant for 'foy-uvv yoerrr'.  He meant 'five Euro', the scared lad behind the counter hadn't a clue and someone had to translate to stop the soon-enraged kn**ker from losing the plot. 

The inner-city Belfast accent always sound like it's spoiling for a fight, even when people are being civil.  To get the effect, speak as if your jaw has been frozen in the dentists and you're smoking a pipe and leave out most consonants.  'Cash' becomes 'cosh' and e.g., 'Alright there big lad' becomes 'ayerigh er biglod'.  'A' is often substituted for 'o'; e.g.: 'I'll knock your bollocks in' becomes 'I'll knaack yer balleeks in'.  At the other end of the social scale, Belfast people - and people East of the Bann generally - are incapable of the rolled 'ch' sound.  Thus you get 'Charlie Hockey' for 'Charlie Haughey', 'Lock Erne' for 'Lough Erne', 'Mackerafelt' for 'Magherafelt' etc.  They also can't distinguish between 'u' and 'oo'.  Hence: 'President Boosh', 'poosh your trolly over the ramp' (a classic from Aldergrove airport), 'Foolham' Football Club etc etc. The other Belfast biggie is how they say words like 'now' and 'town' - these are said as 'noy' and 'toyn'.  ('I'm heading doyn the toyn noy')         

As a general rule in Ireland, the West is the best.  To my ears, Munster and Connaught accents are more musical, ditto the W Coast all the way up to Donegal, and including Sligo and Fermanagh.  Pound for pound, a Galway accent is always more likely to sound more pleasant than a flat (sorry, fla') Laois accent ... My own county of Tyrone is split.  East and North of the county is rapid and guttural and can be harsh enough – 'like terriers barking' as someone once said.  A bloke from Strabane used to have the record for world's fastest talker.  When Brian Dooher (from Aughabrack direction) picked up Sam in 08, he started out in Irish and switched to English half way through, but I reckon some people listening couldn't hear much difference.  West and South is much slower and softer and some parts are heavily influenced by the Fermanagh accent (much as we may not wish to admit that!).  A feature of a W / S Tyrone accent is how words like 'drink' will be softened by introducing a 'h', thus: 'dhrink'.     

Overall though, it's about authenticity and personality.  If you're putting on an accent, you'll sound annoying, no matter what the accent is.  Equally, if you're an aggressive humourless loudmouth, you'll give any accent a bad name. But if you're smart and charming and have a soft accent as well, then you're probably Mick O'Dwyer.  I used, as a boy in the 70s, to marvel at the contrast between this gentle-tongued polite bloke who turned out teams that were skilled (obviously) but also driven, ruthless teams who would wipe the pitch with the opposition.  The clinical nature of the football massacre you had just witnessed didn't seem to fit with the soft twinkly accent now heaping praise upon the vanquished and telling us (with a straight face) what a close match it had been(!).

"And anyway Ian, there I was, driving past Prince of Wales terrace, bless him, on my way to ORRTE, when this fellow called me say they wanted me to do a show on Gaelic games ..."

Dublin is technically Irish, but it's culturally English.  Half the rich Southsiders speak with English accents; and half the poor Northsiders are obsessed with ye premiership.

It's instructive that there were 18 British soldiers murdered on the same day that Mountbatten was killed.  No-one in Ireland or Britain remembers their names; no one publishes commemorative books; no-one (as they currently are debating in Donegal county council) seeks to erect monuments to them; no-one remembers the effect on their families in emotional newspaper articles.

Just as we find that "Bertie the Socialist" was lobbying for tax breaks for big-shots to remain, we now have another FF man lobbying for memorials to victims of the Troubles, but only if they were titled victims. 

"Up the Republic" means something different these days.