Darragh Canavan: Tyrone in a good place despite the inconsistencies

At the start of the year Tyrone would have targeted, at the very least, a place in the All-Ireland football quarter-final.

They achieved that but it was a bumpy enough road to get there. In Ulster they fell at the first hurdle against Monaghan, a game where they played their best football of the year in the opening half.

In the round-robin trek, they lost to Galway, beat Armagh and then drew with Westmeath. John Heslin could have won it for the midlanders - and earned them progression at Tyrone's expense - only to spurn a late setpiece.

It was also a day that Darragh Canavan further enhanced his reputation as one of the best forwards around, kicking ten points. That performance saw him named as the PwC GAA/GPA Player of the Month for June.

Canavan was also one of the few Tyrone players who could say they put in a decent shift in the recent All-Ireland quarter-final defeat to Kerry.

In assesing the 2023 championship, the Errigal Ciarán clubman was accentuating more the positives, even though he felt they were fortunate to get that draw against Westmeath.

He told RTÉ Sport: "We got lucky to be fair. John Heslin doesn't miss too many frees. That summed up our year. We followed that with a good performance against Donegal and then couldn't get going against Kerry."

On what gives hope to Canavan going forward, he said: "I think we're in a decent place, we showed signs that we can challenge the best teams in the country when we're on it. I suppose the inconsistency let us down this year, we couldn't maintain it through a number of games.

"The first half [against Monaghan] was as good as we played all year, played some good, attacking football and were pretty solid at the back. Then we took our foot off the gas and let them back into