TYRONE ARE well placed to ruin Dublin's summer. They still possess players capable of raising their game beyond the mediocre form they have shown so far this championship.
Granted, Stephen O'Neill and Peter Canavan - two of football's greatest forwards - have retired and, for sure, it must be difficult for manager Mickey Harte to motivate men with two Celtic crosses to recapture the intensity of 2005, when their 10-game odyssey ended with an All-Ireland final victory over Kerry.
Before that final they defeated Armagh in the semi-final and Dublin, after a replay, in the last eight. If anything can re-energise the big-game players Brian Dooher leads on to the field on Saturday afternoon, it is the sight of a crammed Croke Park painted blue with spots of Northern white and red.
"It seems like a lot more than just a few years ago," says the Dublin midfielder Shane Ryan of the 2005 meeting. "Yeah, memories of that are just how good Tyrone were. Maybe we outdid ourselves a bit, drawing with them the first day.
"We're two different teams now. It's a whole new challenge for us. They are still such a hard team to play against - the style they play. The challenge is to try and cope with that. We have been training - trying to gear ourselves to counteract that. How we can break them down."
True, both teams have changed dramatically since 2005. Tyrone have been plagued by injuries, while Dublin have improved significantly. The rivalry has at least been maintained; an unruly league meeting at Omagh in early 2006 resulted in mass suspensions - most controversially scrapped on appeal.
Tyrone captured another provincial title last year but Ulster football has been in a lull period, as Wexford's culling of Armagh last Saturday illustrated, while Dublin have soared.
It has been repeated ad nauseam, even by the players themselves, that this is the best opportunity to end a 13-year wait since Sam Maguire last resided in the capital.
Many of the players have been together since the breakthrough 2002 campaign and Ryan is now a core member of the team, the engine of the side, his influence is similar to Dooher's for Tyrone.
The Naomh Mearnóg man was talking to the media in Dublin yesterday morning after picking up the GPA "player of the month" award for July. His domineering performance against Wexford in the Leinster final managed to eclipse the consistency of Alan Brogan and Bryan Cullen.
Dublin have surpassed Tyrone in terms of development; now all they have to do is prove it.
"Yeah, it's very easy to say that looking at the team on paper, but Tyrone are the team with the All-Ireland medals. In our whole squad we've got one between us all in Jason Sherlock. Most of that Tyrone team have two.
"Who's the best team? We won't know that until we go up against each other."
