Peter Canavan

Peter Canavan (born 9 April 1971 ) is an Irish former Gaelic footballer, manager and pundit.

He played inter-county football for Tyrone, and is one of the most decorated players in the game's history, winning two All-Ireland Senior Football Championship medals, six All Stars Awards (more than any other Ulster player, and joint third overall), four provincial titles, and two National Leagues and several under-age and club championship medals.

In 1988, Canavan won the Ulster minor Championship, an under eighteens tournament, but lost in the All-Ireland semi-final to Kerry.

The crux of this team, including Adrian Cush, Ciaran Corr and others, would stay together as part of the senior team for most of the nineties.

His older brother, Pascal, played with him on the Tyrone panel for most of the 1990s.

He is married to Finola (sister of former Tyrone teammate Ronan McGarrity ), and has four children, Aine, Claire, Darragh and Ruairí, and has been a physical education teacher in Holy Trinity College, Cookstown, throughout most of his career (Gaelic games are amateur sports).

While there, he taught Owen Mulligan his point-taking technique, and the pair have been known in the media as 'master and student' ever since, particularly by television commentators.

Canavan captained Tyrone to two All-Ireland Under-21 Football Championships titles in 1991 and 1992, having been on the team which lost the 1990 final, again to Kerry.

In four years as an Under 21 player, Canavan scored 13–53 (13 goals and 53 points—each goal equals 3 points; 13 × 3 + 53 = 92 points, see GAA scoring rules) for Tyrone.

By the time he was twenty, he was already an automatic choice in the senior panel.

Canavan's name was already known around Tyrone because of his exploits for the Under 21 team, but he started to make an impact in the Ulster Senior Football Championship in 1994, as Tyrone lost to eventual All-Ireland champions, Down.

He was the top scorer in the province, earning him his first All Star, at the age of 23.

His early high scoring rate, when he would often be Tyrone's best performer – particularly in the 1995 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final when he scored eleven of Tyrone's twelve points—led to claims that Tyrone was a "one-man show," and that the team was too dependent on him, particularly in his early career.

Throughout the 1995 championship, Canavan had spearheaded Tyrone's march to the final, with round after round of massive scoring exploits.

Against Derry in the Ulster Semi-final, he scored 0–8, and against Galway in the All-Ireland semi-final, he scored 1–7.

Tyrone reached their second All-Ireland Final in 1995, and were up against Dublin who hadn't won a Championship since the 1980s.

In a turgid match, Canavan scored eleven of Tyrone's twelve points in the, but still ended up on the losing side.

The game was remembered as contentious for Tyrone fans, for the fact that a point that would have equalised the match in the dying seconds was controversially disallowed, because the blind-sided referee deemed Canavan to have touched the ball on the ground.

The referee, Paddy Russell stated in his autobiography that he was certain the ball was on the ground, but Canavan contested in the same book that he managed to get elevation on the ball as he punched, which would have been very difficult to do if it was touching the ground.

He was the top scorer in Ireland that year, with a total of 1–38, earning him the inaugural Footballer of the Year title.

The fact that Canavan's scoring tally was so far ahead of his peers on the team led to suggestions that Tyrone were depending too heavily on him.

For the 1996 championship, Canavan was handed the captaincy of Tyrone, and was Ulster's leading scorer for the third year in a row, and subsequently awarded his third successive All Star.

Tyrone reached the All-Ireland semi-final against Meath, but Canavan was one of six Tyrone players to sustain injuries that day, which some Tyrone fans attribute to Meath's heavy-handedness.

He represented Ireland in the International Rules Series on several occasions from 1998 until 2000.

In 2003, just over a week before Tyrone's Ulster final appearance against Down, Canavan's father, Seán, died.

It came as a shock to Canavan, who had thought his father (who was already in hospital) was getting better.

He decided to play in the match, stating that he knew, subconsciously "[he] was going to be playing in the Ulster final all along and Daddy certainly wouldn't have wanted [him] to do anything but play."

Canavan has suffered from asthma since he was a child, and has battled throughout his career to control the ailment.

He told the Asthma Society of Ireland, "I thought to myself, this is something that I am just going to have to put up with."

In later years, however, improved medication has afforded Canavan what he described as, "a better quality of life".

To play for an inter-county GAA team, Canavan had to work around a Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) bylaw, because of a dispute in his parish, Errigal Ciarán.

Two clubs claimed to represent the parish, the established Ballygawley St. Ciaran's club and the newly formed club, then called Errigal Ciaran Naomh Malachai.

Players from the Errigal team were not recognised as being GAA members, because the club failed to register correctly.

Canavan registered as a member of the Killyclogher hurling club, even though he didn't play the sport, just so he would be eligible for selection for the Tyrone minors.

Prior to that, he had not played legitimate club football, but had forged his way onto the Tyrone under-age teams with his performances at school level.

The two clubs united under the banner of Errigal Ciaran two years later.

He is considered one of the great players of the last twenty years by commentators such as John Haughey of the BBC, and in 2009, he was named in the Sunday Tribune's list of the 125 Most Influential People in GAA History.

His scoring record of 218 points is the fourth highest of all time in the Ulster Senior Football Championship.

Since retiring as a player, he has managed the Fermanagh county team (2011–2013).

Canavan is from Glencull, near Ballygawley, County Tyrone and was the tenth of eleven children.