Dermot Carlin is delighted that his former Tyrone team-mate Sean Cavanagh has opted to soldier on with the Red Hands for a 14th season.

The Tyrone captain will be 33 when he leads his county into championship action next summer but Carlin believes the former Footballer of the Year has a vital contribution to make to the younger players around him:

"They need him there. It's okay having youth, but you need experience along with it to guide them and Sean will do that," he notes in The Irish News.

"You need experience, you need men with experience. Even though the youth is there, and the energy is there from those young fellows, but you need experience at the end of the day to manage it and coach the fellows in the right way. And there's no better man than Sean to do that.

"To me age is just a number. Sean is still in prime condition and he still can lead it. When you see that he has been selected for the International Rules again, I don't know how many years that is, and another Irish News All Star, he's still one of the top players, he's still got that talent. Brian Dooher played till he was 35 or 36 and he got better with age.

"I don't think anybody has caught on to Sean's shimmy yet, he still does the same shimmy and still gets away with it, and it's still working, and he pulls out some big scores in Croke Park when it's needed."

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