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Brian Dooher was once Mickey Harte’s on-field rock at Tyrone — today they will meet as equals
IN a football life lived in the full glare of the public eye, only once did Mickey Harte truly appear to lose himself in a moment. Seconds after the final whistle sounded in the 2005 All-Ireland final win over Kerry, he found his captain and as they embraced on the pitch they were circled by a battery of photographers.
It gifted us that image of Harte, emotional and almost vulnerable, weeping into the shoulder of his onfield rock, Brian Dooher.
The context was obvious and poignant, the pair, along with the rest of them, had come back to win Cormac McAnallen his second AllIreland medal 18 months after his passing.
And it is likely that Harte would have entrusted no one other than Dooher to lead his team on that sacred mission.
Of the 16 years he served in a Tyrone jersey, 11 of them were under Harte
That Harte honoured Dooher — and the great irony is that the latter is a man of few words — in the title of his first book, Kicking Down Heaven’s Door, written with the journalist Kieran Shannon in the aftermath of Tyrone’s 2003 breakthrough All-Ireland, said much.
Mind, there was a little bit of editing required of Dooher’s exhortation to his Tyrone team-mates at half-time as they led by four points in that all Ulster final against Armagh.
Peter Canavan had the floor initially: ‘We’ve been knocking on heaven’s door for thirty-five minutes, boys, and she’s opening. Now keep knocking and inside is heaven.’
‘We’ll not be f**kin’ knocking it,’ pipes up Dooher. ‘Start kicking it, boys! We’ll f**kin’ go through her,’ recalls an extract from the book.
Today, they will meet as equals — two All-Ireland winning Tyrone managers — but in a place neither could barely have ever imagined.
In a way, the small mercy for Harte is that it is Celtic Park rather than Omagh, where it might have been easier to get a read of what levels of offence has really been taken by his native county.
In truth, that is likely to be overegged — his status as the county’s footballing godfather going some way to insulate him from that kind of ire — but what fascinates is how those who were shaped by him have made of his decision to lead Tyrone’s arch rivals Derry.
Some, evidently, are still struggling to comprehend the move by Harte, certainly going by the comments of another one of his former captains Sean Cavanagh last week.
‘It is a personal thing for me, Mickey is a Tyrone man, I am a Tyrone man. Maybe I am a little bit nostalgic and old school in my thinking but Mickey probably taught me that more than anyone.
‘And he was brilliant at developing that siege mentality within us, whereby Tyrone people look after Tyrone.
‘Look, I understand that things did not work in the end with Tyrone but at the same time, for me, he had 26 years with Tyrone, would Alex Ferguson have gone to Man City or Liverpool after 26 years?
‘I just could not see it; it is hard to accept,’ said Cavanagh, in his role as an RTÉ analyst last weekend.
If Cavanagh takes that world view of Harte’s move to Derry, then surely Dooher would share it.
Of the 16 years he served in a Tyrone jersey, 11 of them were under Harte, during which time he was entrusted to do just that, look after Tyrone.
He may have often been under-appreciated as a player; Colm O’Rourke infamously dissing him in
2003 when he suggested that he would “eat his hat” if Dooher won an All-Ireland medal.
Instead, he won three but what O’Rourke had not accounted for was that Dooher went from being a good player to a great one under Harte. Such was the impact he had, he was one of the first players to not be referred to by “position” but by “role”.
A ball-scavenging presence, ruthless when winning it on the ground, playing on the edge without it, with a relentless engine all topped off with a capacity to kick scores, he embodied the multi-functioned mantra which Harte preached.
Harte helped create a role for Dooher that would lead to plenty of tribute acts, the most successful seeing Paul Galvin parachuted into the Kerry team.
That Dooher became that force of nature meant — as used to be said of Roy Keane’s impact under Alex Ferguson — that he was justifiably
seen as the on-pitch manifestation of his manager’s presence.
That being the case, it would not be a surprise if Dooher is still coming to terms this afternoon that the man who helped mould Tyrone’s identity is now seeking to take them down, while wearing the badge of a sworn foe.
As for Harte, what intrigues is had he the gift of naming his successor in Tyrone, would he have gone for the captain who kicked down doors for him? That question is irrelevant, because Harte, when he got word as he sat in his car outside Garvaghy on a rainy winter’s evening in 2020 that he had been cut loose, was only thinking about staying.
That seemed to be the end for Harte at the game’s elite cutting edge, until now.
And that is why he is in Celtic Park today, knocking on a different door.
‘What you get when you get Mickey Harte, you get a winning culture, a winning mentality and he will try and harness that winning mentality in Derry,’ said Cavanagh last weekend.
Dooher will hardly need telling that.