Wily Harte keen to talk up ‘impressive’ Roscommon
TYRONE manager Mickey Harte is adamant that neither he nor any of his players will take anything for granted when they lock horns with Roscommon to become the first sides to contest a ‘Super 8s’ games they get the weekend rolling in today’s curtain-raiser at Croke Park.
The Rossies polished off Armagh in a high-scoring thriller at O’Moore Park last Saturday, and when they took their seats for the second game, Kevin McStay’s men couldn’t have failed to notice how Tyrone’s remorseless gameplan, as they blitzed Cork by 16 points, stood as a total contradiction to the shootout quality in their game.
Of the four teams in Group 2, the beaten Connacht finalists are ranked lowest, but Harte is playing little heed to that widely held view.
“I suppose we can only go on recent history and they played their football in Division Two and now they are Division One,” he said.
“So do rankings mean an awful lot? It is very hard to rank anybody after Dublin. We can all rank Dublin as one, and you can rank the other teams in a variety of ways.
“Roscommon’s performance, from what I saw of it, was very impressive as well. They have a lot of good footballers from the underage teams over the last number of years and they ran Galway very close for the Connacht title as well.
“They are a very good team, there is no doubt about it — I don’t care what division they were playing their football in last year.”
The long-serving Tyrone manager has always set out to win his province, but on the occasions they could not land the Anglo-Celt Cup, they’ve inevitably become formidable back-door opponents, learning things and fine-tuning as they go along.
“If you win and get through to the quarter-finals, then it has been a great experience. But if you were to lose any of those games on the way to it, it’s a bad season,” reasoned Harte.
“You can’t be sure which it is going to be. It is the risk factor of sudden death once you lose your provincial encounter, but that’s all behind us now and we are where we want to be, into the Super 8s.”
This game has come a little too early for Lee Brennan, who limped out of the Ulster Championship loss to Monaghan with a hamstring strain.
However, Mark Bradley made a return to action against Cork as a sub and scored a goal, while Tiernan McCann and Colm Cavanagh have looked their old selves after recovering from injuries that left them struggling in the early part of the summer.
“I do feel that when you have been on the qualifier runs, and we’ve been on many of them, you gain momentum if you keep winning,” reflected the Tyrone supremo.
“And you find things out about your team and players that you might not find out in the white heat of the Ulster Championship.”
“So it has a benefit that way. And now the fact that it isn’t knockout in the last eight is going to be good as well. Because normally it is a do-or-die job. We have had enough of them for a while so it takes a wee bit of the pressure off.
“You would certainly want a result, of course, but it isn’t the end of the road if you don’t get a result so that’s all good, I think that is all positive.”