TYFALL

A GAA powerhouse on brink of unthinkable

- BY GARRY DOYLE

THE most important dates left in the National Football League calendar are not where you think they are.

They are not tied to a Division One final. They are not even attached to Dublin's relegation anxiety or Kerry's pursuit of another spring bauble.

They are in Omagh. In the kind of fixtures that rarely make the back page unless something has gone badly wrong.

Because for Tyrone, something might be about to.

We are conditioned to treat the League as a rehearsal dinner. Interesting, occasionally revealing, but not the wedding itself. Managers do not build or lose their reputation on the back of a good or bad League campaign.

Championship is the currency, the judgement.

Yet the structures of the modern game have changed the equation. Promotion from Division Three now carries consequence. Relegation from Division Two carries peril. The middle tier is no longer a waiting room. It is a trapdoor.

And Tyrone are standing on it.

Consider the scale of what we are discussing.