“He probably had a frustrating few years, in terms of playing as a full forward in a team like Tyrone.”
Darren McCurry finished the game against Cavan with an impressive 10 points, and has been in scintillating form under Tyrone’s new management team of Brian Dooher and Ferghal Logan.
The Edendork forward has always had bags of talent, but was always viewed as a bit ‘hot and cold’ during his Tyrone career to date, sometimes shooting the lights out while other times struggling to get involved.
Perhaps Tyrone’s counter-attacking system under Mickey Harte, which was very much a running game, meant that McCurry wasn’t getting the supply needed to make the impact that he’s capable of making.
One forward who reached the very pinnacle of the game was Dublin’s Alan Brogan, and speaking on the GAA Hour, he was full of praise for the man known as “Dazzler.”
“You can see McCurry at the weekend, he looks like he’s relishing the way Tyrone are playing.
“He probably had a frustrating few years, in terms of playing as a full forward in a team like Tyrone, that run the ball a lot – or even in the modern game, him playing as a corner froward, you don’t tend to get a lot of kick passes in.
“But he got plenty of supply against Cavan and you can see the damage he did when he got decent supply.
“For me McCurry has so much talent, but he hasn’t maybe always delivered for Tyrone.
“Seeing him win the ball over his head, I had never really seen him do that before. I’ve never seen that level of going for the ball or aggression in him before.
“Maybe this management team who want Tyrone to kick it in a bit more, will give him a new lease of life.
“If you think of the top forwards in the country, at the moment he’s probably just a little less or so below that, but he probably has the talent to get up there.
“It will be interesting to see when he comes up against better teams in the next couple of games, how he fares playing like that, with a supply and in Croke Park when he has maybe a little bit more space to take on teams, then we will know better.
“He has a lot of talent, but for me, he needs to do that against one of the top teams to move up a level in terms of where he stands against other forwards in the country, but he certainly looks in good form going into an Ulster semi-final.”
You can listen to the full discussion on the GAA Hour now.
