Ciaran McBride believes Tyrone football has entered another very exciting era.

The Red Hands have conquered Ulster for the first time since 2010 to seal an All-Ireland quarter-final date with Mayo this weekend. 'Nineties star McBride is encouraged by what he's seen of this new-look team so far:

"In my opinion, it's a very exciting time," the Monaghan U21 boss comments in The Irish News. "The Ulster final win, although the match itself wasn't the spectacle that, in previous generations, it could have been, showed us that the youth have blended very nicely with some of the more experienced players in the team. And I think that's very significant for Tyrone because a lot of these young players don't know what it is to lose.

"They're always reaching for the highest levels and that's a great thing to have, especially at a young age. Suddenly, the gaps that have existed over the last five or six years, since the greatest Tyrone team that we have ever produced, broke up, those gaps have been filled.

"We probably don't have some of the individual brilliance that we had between 2003 and 2008, or in previous years, in the '80s and the '90s, but the system of play that Tyrone have at the minute suits those young lads. I believe Mickey [Harte, manager] has got the absolute maximum out of everybody there in the system that they're playing at the minute. They're breathtaking at times."

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