The emotional release generated by a county winning its first All-Ireland title is something to behold.

When Tyrone defeated Armagh in the 2003 All-Ireland Final the final whistle signalled a dam-burst of unfettered elation as the pitch was quickly turned a sea of red and white.

The pain of the All-Ireland defeats of 1986 and 1995 had been considerable, but now it was washed away forever.

A couple of other factors added an extra layer of satisfaction to the experience for Tyrone supporters.

Defeating their neighbours and great rivals Armagh in the Final was one of them, but so too was the sight of Peter Canavan lifting the Sam Maguire Cup on behalf of his county.

‘Peter the Great’ had been the county’s champion for a long time before that 2003 All-Ireland Final.

He wasn’t just the greatest footballer in the county’s history, he was up there with the best the game had ever produced.

He was a survivor of the bitter 1995 All-Ireland defeat to Dublin and now in the latter stages of his career it was starting to look like his considerable toil for the Tyrone cause would ultimately prove Sisyphean.

So, it was very fitting that he should be the man to walk up the Hogan Stand steps and speak on behalf of his county when Tyrone finally scaled the mountain.

At a remove of 17 years it’s often forgotten that Tyrone’s date with destiny in 2003 survived a couple of very close scrapes.

In their very first match of the Ulster Championship that year they only salvaged a draw with Derry when Canavan kicked a last gasp equaliser.

When interviewed for the GAA oral history project, the man himself identified it as not just a key moment in Tyrone’s season that year, but in his inter-county career as a whole.

“People talk about one of the most important kicks I would have taken against Armagh in the (2005) semi-final, that got us a win against Armagh, so if I had missed it we were still in the game,” said Canavan.

“In 2003 in the first-round against Derry, time was up when I hit a free kick to get us a draw. There was pressure on that kick because if I didn't score we were out of Ulster and mightn't have done well in the back-door.

“If we couldn't beat Derry it would have been very hard for the team to regroup. So that was a massive kick. 

“We got the draw, didn't play overly well, but we fought hard to come back and get the draw and then we annihilated Derry in the replay.”

Antrim were dispatched comfortably in the Ulster semi-final but it then required a comeback of frankly unbelievable proportions to salvage a draw in the Ulster Final against Down on a day Tyrone survived the concession of four goals.

“It's a game I'll never forget for numerous reasons, the most obvious being my father (Seán) passed away the week before,” said Canavan.

“So, obviously, going into the game my head was all over the place, and I was just trying my best to remain focused.

“It was a lovely sunny day, a great day for football, a typical Ulster Final day with the hill packed in Clones.

“And it was a remarkable game too whereby Down got into a lead and after five minutes of the second-half they scored two goals in quick succession that, I think, put them nine points up.

“Tyrone were in a terrible position, to say the least. We had an almighty fight-back to produce and we done it. We got it back to level I think when Down got a goal with a minute to go.

“So after coming back from nine points down we had to come back again from a goal down. But we done it. We got two or three points in injury-time to get a draw.

“It was just a remarkable match. Down couldn't believe they didn't win it.”

The Mourne-men were made to pay for their inability to finish Tyrone off the first day.

Energised by their Houdini act in the drawn match, Canavan and his team-mates hammered Down by 15 points in the replay to win the Ulster title.

“We went out and played brilliant football in the replay and ended up winning the game by nine or ten points.

“That's a game I can look back favourably on because it was one of my better games. I ended up emulating Frank McGuigan by scoring 11 points in an Ulster Final. They weren't all from play, but that's beside the point!

“I was still happy that I was able to do it. Frank is someone I've personally always looked up to and admired and I was able to emulate him.

“The fact we won it so convincingly and the fact I done that, it was a memorable occasion and we produced a lot of quality football on a wet and miserable day.”

A comfortable win over Fermanagh set up an All-Ireland semi-final joust with Kerry that was arguably not just the making of that Tyrone team, but one of the most significant games of football of the modern era.

Kerry, the aristocrats of football, were humbled by the upstarts Tyrone who ran out deserving 0-13 to 0-6 winners.

The manner in which Tyrone went about their job that day grated with some, though, most notably Sunday Game analyst, Pat Spillane, who branded their style of play as ‘Puke Football’.

That was unfair in the extreme, because Tyrone didn’t just out-fight Kerry on the day, they out-thought and out-played them too.

“People talk about the tactics that was used that day because we were able to swarm Kerry,” said Canavan.

“People look back on it maybe for the wrong reasons.

“It wasn't about being defensive and Tyrone's tackling. Watching the game again, in the first 20 minutes Tyrone played as good a football as they've ever played and we blew Kerry away. I think we might have been leading 0-8 to 0-1 at one stage by playing fast-flowing, attractive football, and people maybe ignore that fact.

“I suppose the tactic was not to give Kerry time on the ball because they had won All-Irelands and had quality players so if you give them time on the ball they will cause us harm.

“So there were occasions where there was four or five Tyrone players around one man tackling like beavers just to get their hands on the ball. It was just pure hunger and a willingness to work hard for one another that allowed that to happen.

“It was remarkable the way it worked out because if there were four or five Tyrone men around a Kerry-man then there were three or four Kerry-men free somewhere.

“There was a one minute spell in the game that's shown time and again for that semi-final. Unfortunately it shows how Tyrone were hungry to win, but it doesn't show the quality of football Tyrone played prior to that.”

What should have been a perfect day for Tyrone was marred when Canavan sustained a serious ankle injury that threatened his involvement in the All-Ireland Final against Armagh.

“I couldn't believe it,” said Canavan. “The fact that this team was good enough to go somewhere but I felt I wouldn't be a part of it.

“In the weeks before an All-Ireland Final you should relish it and enjoy the training. Mine wasn't like that. It was consumed with getting treatment. I had torn a tendon in my ankle.

“Instead of thinking about tactics and how you were going to go about beating Armagh and enjoying the build-up and the training, my time was every day spent going somewhere or doing something to try to get this ankle sorted.

“I had a couple of set-backs along the way. It was a serious enough injury. To cut a long story short, I met with Mickey (Harte) on the Friday before the match just to discuss how best to deal with my own involvement in the game.

“It was a straight-forward enough procedure. He weighed up the advantages of starting the game and the advantages of coming on and the disadvantages of doing both.

“He felt it was better that I start the game and play while I can, for 10 or 15 minutes until the game settled down. He was expecting there might be free-kicks at the start of the game and that it would be hot and heavy because it was a Tyrone-Armagh Final and the first time ever there was an all-Ulster All-Ireland Final.

“It was a big enough occasion to get to an All-Ireland Final but to be playing one of your biggest enemies, arch-rivals, and neighbours in it all added to the occasion.

“He decided that it was best if I start and come off at some stage and then maybe come on again if needed towards the end of the game.”

Harte’s instincts were on the money. The start of the match was hectic with a lot of fouling and five converted frees from Canavan helped them into a 0-8 to 0-4 half-time lead.

Canavan, clearly hampered by injury, somehow played the entire first-half, which hadn’t been part of the plan at all.

“As it transpired Brian McGuigan had a stomach-bug and had to come off in the first-half,” said Canavan. “So I ended up staying on and playing all of the first-half.

“I shouldn't have been there at all because I couldn't run and I just did my best to take my immediate opponent, Enda McNulty, out of the way and leave space for the other boys, basically.

“Again, as it turned out there were numerous frees at the start and it worked out okay. I stayed in the dressing-room after half-time and missed the first ten minutes of the second-half while I was getting the ankle sorted and getting treatment on it.

“That was a surreal experience in itself because you're in a stadium with 80,000 people and you can imagine the noise and excitement there is generated by that, but I couldn't hear a thing because the treatment room I was in was sound-proofed. You could hear nothing, so I hadn't a clue what was going on in the biggest game of my life.

“I was just hoping that things would be going alright. As it turned out, things were going okay, but Tyrone had missed a lot of chances and should have been further ahead going into the last 10 or 15 minutes.

“I knew I was going to be called on at some stage. He said that was going to happen. There was no way that Tyrone were going to win their first All-Ireland and I wasn't going to be on the pitch. So with ten minutes or so to go, I was brought on.

“Again, I wasn't able to have much impact on the game, but I was still there when the final whistle went and we had won our first All-Ireland title.”

Canavan mightn’t have been physically capable of performing to his best, but his reintroduction gave both the Tyrone supporters in the stadium and his team-mates a massive lift at a key time.

Tyrone had dominated most of the match, but Armagh were on the front-foot in the closing stages and the return of the talismanic Canavan to the pitch was a psychological master-stroke.

In the end, the match finished 0-12 to 0-9 in Tyrone’s favour, and it was a thoroughly deserved victory.

It wasn’t without its nervy moments, though. They missed a lot of clear-cut chances, and in the end required a heroic block from Conor Gormley on Steven McDonnell that probably prevented what would have been an equalising goal.

When Canavan eventually extricated himself from the swarm of Tyrone supporters who had made a bee-line for their hero after the final whistle blew, he delivered one of the great All-Ireland Final captain’s speeches.

“As you'd imagine the sense of excitement and euphoria that generated, the first time ever that Tyrone had won after so many years of trying and the great teams that we had had. Eventually we had done it and I was getting the chance to climb the steps of the Hogan Stand and lift the Sam Maguire.

“As a young player growing up, that's your ultimate ambition. For it to happen to myself, I had to pinch myself. Those few moments, knowing you were going to climb those steps was special.

“Of course there were thousands of Tyrone supporters on the pitch at this stage and what was going through my own head was that I'm going up to say something here. I had no speech prepared, nothing wrote out.

“My sister-in-law, Máire Quinn, teaches Irish in Dean McGurk School in Carrickmore and had given me a cupla focal beforehand, what to say, I don't know if I said them right because I'm not fluent in Irish myself.

“I don't know what came out of my mouth, and likewise the speech, I had things in the back of my head to say if we won it, but nothing really planned out. I wish now it had been more structured and I had something, but as captain on many was the team before I had some great speeches made out that nobody ever got to hear.

“So, from that point of view, I put nothing down on paper and didn't give too much thought to it. I had enough on my mind to worry about my own fitness and what I was going to say to the players and different things before the game was much more important than the speech after if we won it.

“I had a lot of things in my head and didn't realise it went on as long as it did. I'd be embarrassed listening to it again, but I got most of the messages across that I wanted to get across.

“It was a privilege for me to be able to speak for so many Tyrone people on that day. I know what it meant to so many people.”

One of the most poignant moments of Canavan’s speech came when he paid tribute to two people who weren’t alive to witness the moment.

His late father Seán, and Paul McGirr who had died following a collision in in the semi-final of the 1997 Ulster minor football championship when he played alongside many of the now 2003 senior All-Ireland winners.

“I have regrets from the point of view that my father wasn't there to see it,” admits Canavan.

“I would have known how proud he would have been that in the year he died I got to do this after him watching so many All-Irelands and going down to watch Tyrone in big games, so that was bitterly disappointing.

“But it was still a momentous occasion. This was a day that a lot of people said would never happen. People said Tyrone were cursed, that there was a jinx on them, that they would never win an All-Ireland. And we done it.

“And time would prove that once we won the first one it would give people so much confidence to go on and do it again, and that's exactly what happened.”