Seán Cavanagh: Tyrone's Tiernan McCann will know he made a mistake

McCann received a two-game ban for an incident during Tyrone's loss to Donegal

In the aftermath of Tyrone's Ulster semi-final loss to Donegal, one of the major talking points was Tiernan McCann's altercation with Stephen McMenamin.

The incident, in which the Killyclogher man appeared to gouge the mouth and face of an opponent and also stand on his neck, went unnoticed by the officials.

However, it has since emerged that he will miss Tyrone's next two games as a result.

Seán Cavanagh, a former teammate of McCann, said the Red Hands star regrets his actions:

"Tiernan is an intelligent guy, he's a pharmacist. He knows. I remember after the Darren Hughes incident, he was the first man to come out and say, 'I'm sorry, I made a mistake'.

"I've no doubt he felt the exact same after Donegal.

McCann has since said he regrets a dive which led to the sending off of Darren Hughes during the 2015 All-Ireland quarter-final

"I haven't been speaking with him, but that type of incident, it's not the type of thing you want to see in the game. Tiernan will be the first man to tell you that.

"There's always two sides to these things and that's the bit that people watching on TV don't always see. I'm pretty sure there must have been some sort of provocation there, I don't know the details of it. It doesn't seem logical to me that he did what he did without [provocation].

"He lost the head, he did something that should never be [done] in a sporting environment. It obviously was some sort of a reaction."

Sean Cavanagh was speaking at the official launch of the Benetti Menswear GAA Ambassador campaign for 201

Cavanagh feels the GAA need to clamp out such incidents from the sport.

"Look, he's got his two-game ban and that's where it's at at the moment," he said. "There's been a few incidents creeping in, eye gouging and stuff like that and I think everybody recognises that it has to be harshly clamped down on. The sooner the GAA do that with every incident, the better for the game."

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