Tyrone have a lot of work to do ahead of Donegal, warns Mr Dependable Mattie Donnelly

At one point during the first half in Kingspan Breffni, he was making goal-saving blocks in the image of Conor Gormley. In the second period he was getting on the end of moves to deliver a point.

With four players making their full championship debuts, they needed his experience and leadership too. He played all of the 100 minutes of action, a considerable achievement for a player who hadn’t played a full game in the best part of a year since suffering another serious injury at the Kilmacud Crokes Sevens.

At the end he was named as the official man of the match, an remarkable outing in the circumstances. As Tyrone’s joint manager Brian Dooher put it when asked about Donnelly’s input: “We are used to expecting that.”

Afterwards, Donnelly himself was already throwing his eyes down the road and the Donegal challenge that looms. They’d done just enough to take care of Cavan but might have been a bit cleaner about it all when they found themselves eight points up on 53 minutes.

But a black card and sustained Cavan pressure saw the home side launch a comeback and force extra-time.

“(The) Ulster Championship has the capacity to be quite chaotic and (produce) pandemonium and that’s exactly what it was,” Donnelly said.

​“We mixed the good with the bad and we didn’t deal well with the black card at all and the game swung in that period. (A) bit of avoiding the black card and discipline but also we’ll have to deal with that as well.

“Look we’re a (young) team a lot of boys starting out on their championship journey as well but good experience. You’ll not beat that experience and it’s great to get through with the win but we know we have a lot of work to do.

“If we bring that sort of performance next week we’ll not compete with Donegal.”

Cavan built their comebacks on goals, two of them inside a few minutes, the sort of thing Tyrone will have to be much better at in Derry next weekend.

“The goal at this level, they are massive momentum-swingers and that probably started that downhill slide for us. And with the great crowd they had here and great atmosphere, they sensed that and went at it and caused us great problems.

“They have a lot of direct players and great players who have won at all levels. So we struggled to deal with that and that’s something we’ll have to review because we’ll face it tenfold next week and we’ll have to deal with it a lot better to compete with Donegal.”

Donnelly caught some of Donegal’s dismantling of the Derry machine on Saturday night and is hopeful the experience of coming through extra-time will stand to them.

“We knew a Jim McGuinness team with the time they had would show up with a plan and every man stuck to it and performed their role to a tee and they were fairly worthy winners so I wasn’t surprised at all.”