Ulster fallout: Sunday brought Tyrone to the same point of no return familiar to every All-Ireland winning team from Ulster over the past four decades. Not since Down in 1961 have northern All-Ireland winners managed to retain their provincial title.

Part of the intrigue surrounding Tyrone centred on their different training methods, emphasising quality rather than quantity, and the prospect existed of a team that would be able to maintain an intense tempo on a year-by-year basis.

In Clones at the weekend the curtain came down on the champions. Victorious Donegal manager Brian McEniff said he thought Tyrone were tired and that would be a consensus. But the team had reason to be worn out by more than the routine celebrations that accompany an All-Ireland win.

Captain Cormac McAnallen's death earlier this year was devastating, whereas Peter Canavan's injury kept him out for most of the year and even at the weekend a further injury sidelined him. Reluctant to labour his loss, Tyrone manager Mickey Harte nonetheless concedes the reality.

"Without doubt both of those had a big impact. I don't want to make that connection, but Cormac was a tremendous motivator, an excellent person and a great player, who gave us a sense of security at the back.

"Then at the other end Peter Canavan has been a maestro for over a dozen years."

Having been selected for his first match since the All-Ireland final, Canavan picked up a further injury.

"He hurt his back in a club game. Peter had been trying to get fit for Sunday by playing with the club reserves but ended up with an injury.

"He couldn't even do the warm-up. I didn't want to withdraw him from the panel because of the potential blow to morale but he wasn't an option. His ankle would have stood up to 20 minutes or so, which would have been great for us.

"I'm not using this as an excuse but it was a huge loss. We've tried to cope with all that's happened this year but maybe it caught up with us on Sunday."

One of the issues most difficult to address has been the separation of McAnallen's loss as a person and the impact on the team and its prospects. Harte accepts that the death of a young man can make discussion of its relevance to football appear inappropriate.

"I suppose it does. I don't want to go on about a bad loss in a sporting context when the real loss is his family's and his fiancée's.

"In the practical sense though, his determination and energy in training sessions are sadly missed. Nobody knows the toll that can take on a team and its different personalities."

Their singular circumstances aside, Tyrone have had all the usual All-Ireland hangovers to deal with. Loss of form, diminished hunger and injuries have all contributed to a feeling that the team was starting to run on empty. Hoping for the best Harte was still aware of the worst.

"That's the second of the three titles we had last year gone. The only consolation is that we're not out of the third and have a chance to regroup and challenge for that. But if we don't do something different, take ourselves to a new plane, we won't retain the third one either. We're at a crossroads.

"I would have recognised that we weren't performing to the same level as last year but yet we seemed to be getting decent results. We played two very good National League semi-finals against Galway but our Ulster campaign wasn't all that exciting.

"We should have got a shock against Fermanagh. They had lost most of their players from last year but gave us a very serious challenge. That should have been our wake-up call. Even in the first half on Sunday there didn't seem to be any real danger."

Eamonn Cregan once said that although the Limerick hurling team that defended the All-Ireland in 1974 believed it was doing all the things it had done the year before, the reality was different. Harte disputes even the premise of that.

"Doing the same things isn't good enough. This is a new season, a new campaign. You have to have greater hunger. You have to keep moving. Otherwise you're going backwards. There's no such thing as standing still."

Tyrone have a couple of weeks before they enter the qualifiers. Their opponents won't be known until Sunday evening's draw. At least everything is simplified now. There's one title left to defend; otherwise 2004 is oblivion.

"There's some sense of that. A day of reckoning is coming. We have a choice. Do we want to prolong our hold on the All-Ireland or do we decide to close the book for this year and take a rest? Depending on how we perform, it can give us the impetus to go on.

"Whoever we meet next will be a serious challenge. Our opponents aren't that important because our biggest challenge is ourselves."