By John Harrington

Last Saturday it really hit home to Colm Cavanagh that he was now very much an ex-county footballer.

The sense of dislocation of not being part of the Tyrone team that defeated Kerry in last Saturday’s All-Ireland semi-final was amplified by the fact he watched it on TV while at a friend’s stag party.

So, how did it feel? Was there any part of him that wished he’d given it one more year with Tyrone and could now be looking forward to an All-Ireland Final?

Ach yeah, always,” he says. “Especially when the question did get asked in December or January this year, would I go back by a couple of different people in the set-up.

“Whenever that football piece has been such a big part of your life for all them years, it’s very hard to set it aside.

“The call was from Brian (Dooher). He reached out pre-Christmas. I told him that I'd wait until after Christmas to make any decision. I gave him an answer after that. I did mull over it a good number of weeks before I came back to them. Obviously, I made the call after that.

“They felt that was still a role of some sort for me to play. It's not something that you can go into half-heartedly, and not being able to give that full commitment, because you'll get found out quickly if you are half doing it, given the intensity and the fitness levels it takes.

“I had that early contact. It just wasn't to be. If they ring me now, maybe I'll give them a different answer at this stage!”

“Whenever that football piece has been such a big part of your life for all them years, it’s very hard to set it aside.”

If he had known at the time that the season would be a relatively condensed one that wouldn’t begin in earnest until the summer, would he have decided to give it one more year?

“I don't think I would have,” he says. “It was more about where I was at in terms of working and my own business. I knew there was going to be travelling.

“My wife was trying to get me to go back. She was saying, 'Oh, it's going to be a short season. You only have to commit for a few months. With the work scenario and also not having the headspace for it, because I gave so much to it the previous 13-and-a-half years.

“You have to live and breathe this thing to have any sort of success. I just couldn't go back into that bubble again, even though there was a slight draw from the changes in the setup.”

Even though he’s happy he made the right decision to step back from inter-county football in order to better focus on his business, Inspired Tax Incentives, when he watches the more adventurous brand football that Tyrone are now playing under the management of Fergal Logan and Brian Dooher, he knows he’d enjoy it a lot.

“Yeah, I think I would have,” he says. “The draw for me (to consider coming back) was that I'd be experiencing something different in terms of the setup. I remember doing an interview way back in December or January, and one of the titles was 'Cavanagh can't stomach playing for Mickey Harte'. It was probably taken a wee bit out of context, that I just wasn't enjoying the setup as a whole, and where things were at. That was more to do with myself.

“That was one thing I had to decide on, that there would be a different setup, different approach to how they would be doing everything. From tactics, to video analysis, to training styles. People don't realise that there are so many things and aspects of a setup. There was a part of me that did want to experience that. I wish it had happened a wee bit earlier in my career, when I was still fit and well to give something to them.

“It is what it is, it's life and that's sport. I can sit back and watch now, and hopefully they do the business.”

So, having watched Tyrone take out Kerry last weekend, does he think the team is playing a much different brand of football now under Logan and Dooher than they did during Mickey Harte’s reign as manager?

“There's a lot more emphasis now on keeping people up the pitch than there was before and trying to stop things high up the pitch,” he said. “There's an awful lot more intensity and work-rate from what I can see.

Again, that's more around the system and style they're playing. They're trying to take more risks and be more adventurous. The teams I played on, we did try to do that, but we did revert back to trying to get men behind the ball and shuffling left to right.

“I just think when you're trained to play that type of football it can be very difficult to break that cycle where you're playing a certain way. Without a change in management and change of players happening, it's very hard to do that.

“They've definitely changed even if there's obviously some glimpses there of what they've been working on for the last five or six years. There's definitely a freshness to what they're doing and they're definitely taking more risks and they seem to be given the licence to go out and play football and be a bit freer. Whereas in the years gone past it hasn't really been the case."

Part of him might wish he was on the inside still, but Cavanagh is looking forward to watching his former team-mates from the stands on All-Ireland Final and hopeful they can get over the line.

“Look, I can genuinely hold my hand on my heart and say I’m really happy for the lads,” he said.

“We’ve been chatting in Tyrone for about two or three years now, saying there is an All-Ireland in that team. It’s just when it’s going to come.

“I’m just hoping it’s going to come this year, because there’s a lot of lads there that have been through the trenches over the last five, six, seven years. The Mattie Donnellys, the Peter Hartes and whatnot.

“There isn’t any player in either set-up that’s got an All-Ireland medal. So it’s just going to make it very interesting.”