Glass blowing was a bit risky from Harte but it was a big start

IT was a high wire act by Mickey Harte in Tralee last weekend as he quickly phased his Glen contingent back into the Derry team.

Of course, it was the second successive year that they were dropped straight back into the county team after playing in an All-ireland club final.

Rory Gallagher had done the same thing for last year’s opener against Limerick but it was no less surprising all the same.

It was a big call by Harte, for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, there’s the injury risk. The emotions that Conor Glass, Ethan Doherty and Ciaran Mcfaul experienced over the previous six days would have been exhausting.

Two or three days of celebrations before landing back at county training on the Wednesday night, as Mcfaul revealed in a post-match interview. Throw in the fact that the distance from Celtic Park in Derry to Tralee’s Austin Stack Park is almost 300 miles – more than six hours by bus – and the danger signs are flashing bright red.

Two plays within a minute late on in the game clearly showed Glass was flagging badly at that stage.

First, his marker

Barry Dan O’sullivan took him into his own full-back line, winning a mark in front of Glass, looking jaded 10 metres in his wake.

Luckily for Derry, O’sullivan missed the relatively routine kick, hitting the post.

A minute later Glass was in possession on his own 45 but slipped and didn’t have the energy to get a pass away, with Kerry turning him over before Stephen O’brien butchered what seemed a certain goal. I’ve been there as a player – your legs are completely gone and you are effectively punch drunk, simply unable to function in even the most basic way.

Glass would surely have been very vulnerable to injury at this stage. And if he had, say, pulled a hamstring, it would have been a very expensive – not to mention unnecessary – setback at the start of Derry’s season.

The second element of why this was such a risky hand for Harte to play is that, by fielding 13 of the side that lost last year’s All-ireland semi-final, he went to Tralee fully loaded against effectively half a Kerry team.

It meant they absolutely had to win to avoid having egg on their faces. In the end, they just about got there.

It appears as though Harte has identified Derry’s opening two League games as must-win, with his native Tyrone coming to Celtic Park tomorrow.

Beyond that, I’ll be interested to see if he rests the Glen players – and Glass (inset) in particular given that he has been on the go for two years solid now.

They have Monaghan and Galway in rounds three and four, which may be the time to pull them back before unleashing them again for the trip to play Dublin at Croke Park.

If Derry’s season is to go the full distance that adds up to 17 games, presuming they avoid a preliminary quarter-final.

They’ll really need Glass et al at their very best later in the year, when games like last weekend’s will be largely forgotten.

For all that, if I was in Glass’s shoes, I’d have been the first man on the bus to Tralee. But sometimes players need to be protected from themselves too.