FOR A man who hasn’t played any serious football for almost eight months, Brian Dooher still looks pretty fit. More chiselled, actually, with that slightly gaunt and worn-out look of an athlete gone past his prime. He turns 34 in August.

If this was any other footballer in the country he’d probably be regarded as finished. Particularly given the so-called “pace” of the modern game. Dooher has spent the entire winter and spring fairly crippled by a groin injury that only now has allowed him return to regular training. He still looks worried about it.

Tyrone begin the defence of their All-Ireland title in just over a fortnight’s time, playing Armagh in Clones. You can imagine what that’s going to be like.

Dooher is being given a “50-50” chance of playing some role by his manager Mickey Harte – but if they are the best odds then Dooher will happily take them.

“Well that’s probably being a little optimistic,” says Dooher – the headline act at yesterday’s football championship launch in Croke Park. “I’m just back training the last week or two. I played one club game the other week there. And it didn’t feel too great. I’ve still a long way to go to get up to the pace of championship football.

“Every week I will improve, hopefully. But I just don’t know. I’m not going to set any deadline because there’s no point. If I make the Armagh game then great, but if I don’t that’s just the way it is.

“So time will tell. I wish I could say. No one knows how injuries come on. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. All you can do is give it a go.”

The injury – osteitis pubis – has been at him for several years now. It’s common enough for footballers, usually brought on by the cumulative effect of the shearing movement involved in kicking the football, resulting in inflammation of the pubic bone, which Dooher says himself, “doesn’t settle down too handy”.

Truth is, he was also troubled by a series of injuries approaching last year’s championship, including a chronic knee problem. That didn’t do him too much harm as he had another storming summer on the field, climaxed by his All-Ireland final performance at wing forward that proved central to undoing Kerry’s challenge.

The problem is there’s no guarantee he’ll come back as easy this time. He underwent an operation in November, but since then practically all his training has been in the gym.

“It wasn’t right last year, and has got worse since. It’s about keeping it at bay now. It’s not nice. No one likes being injured. But you just get on with it. There’s no point feeling sorry for yourself. If the intention is to get back you just keep plugging away, and hopefully it will come round.

“It’s started to improve gradually this last while. But it takes longer every time to get back to match fitness. You can only get that by playing matches. Hopefully, I can bump it up again the next week or two.”

Harte seems so confident Dooher will make it back, that he showed no hesitation in renaming him Tyrone captain for 2009. Not that Dooher needed any extra incentive. At no point over the winter did he even contemplate retirement – nor has he contemplated this being his last season.

“Well no, I’d be hoping to play as long as you can play, and have something to offer. You’ll be retired long enough. These last few months I’ve been working so hard in the gym with the intention of getting back. That’s the only reason I was doing it.

“So we’ll see what happens. There are a lot of good guys on the panel. But I’m not looking beyond next week, let alone next year. That would be a little too foresighted.”

The captaincy, however, is clearly special to him – particularly given Tyrone’s precious team spirit that is so much their trademark. “It’s a big honour in Tyrone. I’m no different though. We’re all in it together, and will do the same work together. That’s the way we have it in Tyrone. No one is seen as any more special or valuable than anyone else. All 35 or 36.

“Everyone goes to training respecting everybody else, and that’s the way it should be.”

Tyrone, inevitably, will start the Armagh game on May 31st as favourites, but Dooher knows how tenuous that is when it comes to Ulster football. They’d like to win another Ulster title, but Tyrone have found it hard to maintain their previous All-Ireland successes of 2003 and 2005.

“Maybe the hunger wasn’t quite there, but then maybe it was, but other teams just worked harder than us. All we can try to be is the best we can, starting with Armagh. We’d a patchy enough league, so we know we’ve still got a lot of work to do.

“We’ll certainly give the Ulster title a good rattle. No one wants to lose any match in the championship. We’re no different.”