'Yes, technically he’s not a native but I don’t think we need to be checking passports or anything just yet.'
Enda McGinley has described his clubmate Malachy O’Rourke’s appointment as Tyrone manager as both “stunning” and “brave”. O’Rourke made his return to inter-county management this week, five years after his reign as Monaghan boss ended having enjoyed a hugely successful spell in the meantime with Derry club, Glen, the reigning All-Ireland champions.
Three-time All-Ireland winner McGinley, whose early playing days with Errigal Ciaran overlapped with the latter end of O’Rourke’s career and later won a county title under him in 2006, is hugely enthused by the route that Tyrone have taken after Brian Dooher and Feargal Logan stepped aside.READ MORE: Who is Niall Ó Ceallacháin? Meet the new Dublin senior hurling manager Unlike his previous postings with his native Fermanagh and Monaghan, O’Rourke is taking charge of a county that is set up to compete strongly for All-Irelands in the coming years, with a fresh batch of emerging talent in Tyrone to complement the more seasoned players that won an All-Ireland in 2021. McGinley said: “Tyrone is a very high profile county. It is a higher profile, with all due respect, to the likes of Monaghan and Fermanagh so it will be a slightly different mentality and slightly different pressure there but he’s a man that will relish that. “He will know that there’s good football people there and I just think it’s a stunning appointment and a brave appointment in many ways by the county board, albeit it looks a matter of fact, ‘Of course you would appoint Malachy O’Rourke if he was available’. “But with all the usual wee things in the back doors and in and around committees and county boards, there’s a courage that they’ve went and they’ve appointed somebody like Malachy and there’s a real excitement now in the county to see what he can do.” The bravery that McGinley refers to is largely in relation to the fact that Tyrone don’t have a recent tradition of appointing managers from outside the county, particularly with local man Paul Devlin having delivered two All-Ireland under-20 titles, albeit O’Rourke has been resident in Ballygawley for 32 years. “Paul would have been a suitable candidate but when Malachy O’Rourke became available then that sort of altered things, I’d imagine, significantly,” said the RTE analyst. “Yes, technically he’s not a native but I don’t think we need to be checking passports or anything just yet. “I played along with Malachy many moons ago for the club, back in the ‘90s. He’s been living in Ballygawley for, gosh, it has to be 30-plus years so I would count him as an honorary Tyrone man and his right-hand man in terms of Ryan Porter is an absolute Tyrone man so his set up is Tyrone and Malachy has a good bit of Tyrone in him. “I’m sure Fermanagh people are very like us Tyrone ones anyway so I personally don’t think there’s any issue at all and it would have been a real miss, I think, if that was the reason used to not appoint him but thankfully it hasn’t been.” O’Rourke only spent a single season in charge of Errigal Ciaran 18 years ago, but it left former Antrim boss McGinley in no doubt that he was going places in coaching and management. “The lightness of touch, he is so understated and yet I remember just whenever he went at it or switched to a more motivational side, he was awesome at it, so he kept it really simple. “Really good man-management. Very good listener. There’s no airs or graces. He’s not a manager that’s coming with all the razzmatazz, he’s coming as a big name purely based on him, not based on some outsized media personality or a huge outspoken person and he’s always in the news and he’s always grabbing soundbites. “He is so understated. He’s such a safe pair of hands. He’s such a respectful person. He’s got huge humility about himself, despite everything that he’s achieved and that stands out when he’s managing the dressing room. “So the fact now that he has such a weight of success behind him and still carries himself in this manner, it means almost that it’s Jim Gavin-esque where he’s this quiet fella. “But he just carries such a weight and I think that has a huge impact and certainly has done so from chatting to players, the response is just the same, that anybody would love to be in and around the set up, to work in and around him so when you have that as a manager, it’s one hell of a start.” McGinley was part of a golden generation of Tyrone underage players that won a minor and two under-21 All-Irelands before winning three at senior level - and he’s confident that the players coming through now from the 2022 and ‘24 All-Ireland under-20 wins can emulate their achievements at the highest level too. “As much as those things can be predicted, I absolutely think they can. I think under Feargal and Brian and the way the young players came through and the way they went about their business, I was massively impressed, I have to say, and I said that to various ones I was chatting to. “I think it’s the most exciting crop we’ve had potentially from that time. Now, does that guarantee you titles? Absolutely not. “Titles are very strange things and fine lines between getting over the line or not but certainly there would be the hope in Tyrone that we can really push. “We’re not a million miles away from it at the minute. We’ve obviously won one in the not so distant past but there would be a real expectation that there is the ingredients there to make a proper, sustained push at the very top of the game.”
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