Tyrone manager Malachy O’Rourke plans to give his Errigal Ciaran contingent a ‘bit of a break’ following their run to the All-Ireland club final.

The Dunmoyle men fell to a four-point loss to Cuala in Croke Park with the Canavan brothers Darragh and Ruairi suffering from concussion which ruled them out of Tyrone’s opening two League fixtures as they follow return to play protocols.

However, speaking after his side’s round one victory over Derry in Omagh, O’Rourke said the likes of Peter Harte, Cormac Quinn and Joe Oguz won’t be rushed back either ahead of Saturday’s meeting with All-Ireland champions Armagh.

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“Yeah, we definitely want to give them a bit of a break. That couple of points tonight (Saturday) helps in that you aren’t rushing them back in,” said O’Rourke.

“It is a matter of sitting down with the lads, they are obviously disappointed after last week. They’ve had a tough year and they’ve been playing all year.

“You could get short-term gain out of it, but long-term pain. We’ll be chatting with them and seeing how they feel and, hopefully, get them integrated back over the next couple of weeks.

“We have a panel there that we want to get a look at as well.

“We’ll be delighted when the boys do come back in and they’ve been playing different rules as well. It is just a matter of getting them in and getting them up to speed with the new rules and playing and training with the rest of the lads.”

Armagh lost their opening game to Galway with midfielder Niall Grimley also sent off which rules him out of this weekend’s round two clash at the Box-It Athletic Grounds.

Kieran McGeeney also confirmed that Rian O’Neill is taking some time away from the squad, but O’Rourke knows the Orchard County will be determined to bounce back against their Ulster rivals.

“I saw that Armagh were beaten and it is often the way that the team who gets beaten has a real focus during the week to try and get the points the next week,” said O’Rourke.

“It will be a really tough game down in Armagh. At the same time, we know all the games are going to be tough. We want to see how we get on from week-to-week.

“See what we are doing well and what we are not doing so well and see if we can keep improving. That’s the overall aim in the League. Hopefully, we get enough points to keep ourselves in the division - that’s obviously the first aim and, after that, it is about improving from game-to-game.”

One area of improvement O’Rourke has already identified in the off-season was discipline. In recent seasons, Tyrone have suffered dismissals in key games and, with the new rules penalising dissent after a referee’s decision to award a free will result in the free being advanced 50 metres.

In their first competitive fixture in 2025, Tyrone picked up no cards while Derry fell foul of the new dissent rules three times in the first half and O’Rourke was satisfied with how his team reacted to the new rules.

“That was pleasing. We’ve had a couple of challenge matches and we’ve concentrated on that in our own in-house games to get on top of that because it is a big punishment.” added the Tyrone boss, who was also part of the Football Review Committee.

“The boys were disciplined at the back, some great tackling and they didn’t give away needless frees and no yellow cards, so I was pleased with that.”

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