Mickey Harte spoke of his relief after Tyrone got their championship campaign back on track with victory over Limerick.

The Red Hands made hard work of seeing off the Munster minnows, having had a six-week layoff since their Ulster SFC preliminary round loss to Donegal.

"The first game is always a very dangerous game because you're not well prepared for it," the Tyrone manager said in the Irish Daily Star.

"Donegal have arrived in the Ulster final since they beat us and we've been kicking our heels since. We were meeting a team from a lower division who, if they'd won this game, their season was brilliant and if we lost it, our season was a disaster.
"All those things come into players' heads. I was pleased with how we pushed on in the second half on a day when things weren't going for us."

Tyrone can now look forward to hosting Meath in the next round of the qualifiers, while for Limerick manager John Brudair, it was a case of what might have been after Ian Ryan had an uncharacteristic off-day from frees.

"Ian is an ace marksman, he usually nails all those kicks for us," he rued.

"Those kicks would have kept things tight going into the last 10 or 15 minutes, but when the gap spread to five or six, then it became a hard scoreline to claw back."

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