ROCK HARD PLACE
As he beings the final year of his current term, Tyrone will find themselves in a no-win situation when manager Mickey Harte’s position comes up for review once again
Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds then they will just have to sit on their blisters – Abraham Lincoln.
WE don’t know if Mickey Harte is a student of Lincoln’s wit but you suspect he would not be rushing to put out any fires lit under the posteriors of the delegates who embarrassed him this week.
The shock was not so much that Harte’s request for a one-year extension was rejected on Monday night last, but that it was his own who did the rejecting. Last year, when he was put forward for ratification that will extend his reign as Tyrone senior manager to 15 years by the end of next year, eyebrows were raised when three clubs had the temerity to vote against him.
In the interim, Tyrone under his guiding hand lost just one game out of 18, secured promotion back to Division 1 and won a first Ulster title in six years. And yet his reward is that the dissident but isolated three has morphed into a significant, if silent, majority of 20 who iced his attempt to secure an extra 12 months before his present term runs out.
Perversely, if there is a comfort in that for Harte, it is ice cold. True this time, unlike in 2014, the executive backed his request for an extension which might suggest that the fracture lines in what is perceived to be a strained relationship have healed.
It wasn’t just results that was the issue back then – they had exited the qualifiers to Armagh that summer and followed it up with relegation the following spring – but his five-year boycott of RTÉ that left his political masters discomforted.
The break-down of his relationship was sourced in a couple of issues, the most significant a satirical sketch which poked fun at Harte on the John Murray radio show, which concluded with the playing of Pretty
Little Girl From Omagh, which was deemed tasteless in the aftermath of the murder of his daughter Michaela.
The board were keen for that boycott to come to an end – there is acceptance and understanding of Harte’s own position – but they were under the impression players would be made available at the start of last season. When a leading board official went to the dressing room after a first round National League defeat to Monaghan to request a player, though, they left emptyhanded. The following week in Castlebar as a Tyrone player left the dressing room to attend to post match media duties, he was asked by Harte would he be speaking to RTÉ. ‘No f**king way,’ responded the player, to cheers of encouragement from the dressing room. That underlines Harte’s strength within the dressing room, and serves as a reminder that a new generation of Tyrone footballers are absolutely loyal to him. The flip side to that is the board’s leadership may not have forgiven or forgotten that snub, even if they gave their blessing to an extension this time.
This week’s vote by the clubs could serve to embolden the executive the next time that they have a big call to make, most likely next autumn, aware that for the first time that a significant section of their constituency could be open to change.
What is harder to figure particularly in light of the results this season, is what was behind that vote this week?
Perhaps it is a growing sense in Tyrone that the one thing which Harte needs more of – time – is something that Tyrone may be running out of. That might seem strange given the perception that he is in the early stages of a rebuilding project, back-boned by last year’s Under- 21 winning team, but even if and when Dublin’s ravenous appetite is sated, others are primed to fill the gap.
At the same time that the Tyrone clubs snubbed Harte last Monday evening, Kerry were agreeing to two more years under Éamonn Fitzmau-
rice, who will not be shy of quality as he enters the transition zone.
By the time Fitzmaurice concludes his two-year reign in 2018 he will have become the Kingdom’s longest serving manager since the late Paidí Ó Sé, having served six years.
While Tyrone has opted for stable government, Kerry has thrived under fresh leadership at the helm.
During the time Harte has been in charge of Tyrone, the Kingdom have operated under five different managers – Ó Sé, Jack O’Connor (twice), Pat O’Shea and Fitzmaurice – and have won All-Irelands under every one of them.
And it is not just playing talent that they are nourishing; they are seeking to create a wealth of management options to ensure that they plot the pathway ahead.
While the assumption is that O’Connor will return for a third term when Fitzmaurice takes his leave, by that time others will also be in the frame. Diarmuid Murphy has served a long apprenticeship.
Meanwhile, Peter Keane’s work with the minors will see him move up to the Under-20s, Stephen Wallace’s care of a junior set-up that has morphed into an Under-23 development panel has been feted, while Declan O’Sullivan’s current involvement with the Under-21s has seen him touted as a manager in waiting.
But that is a conversation that they are not even having in Tyrone.
This week’s vote might just be seen as a hankering for that to begin.