 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 . 
