A Harte act to follow
Back in an All-Ireland final, Tyrone boss has worked wonders again
In a football life-time where V has always stood for victory, vindication is hardly the prize which has ever consumed Mickey Harte. after all, he can crunch the kind of numbers that no-one can ever come near. next Sunday will mark the 287th game in charge of the tyrone senior footballers, and he will be seeking his 190th win.
if opta ever get around to embracing gaelic football, they would find that over the past 16 years he is operating at a 66 per cent win rate – that is a higher career return than English soccer’s two most successful managers, alex Ferguson (60 per cent) and Bob Paisley (57 per cent). and that is only the half of it. in the 28 continuous years he has served as tyrone manager – including the minors and Under 21s prior to taking over the seniors in 2002 – he has led tyrone teams into 30 finals and lost just three.
and those happened to be national finals – the 1997 minor final, 2002 U21 final and the 2013 allianz League decider.
When it comes to getting the business done when it really matters, the gaa has never witnessed anything quite like him.
and, yet, for all that there has to be a part of him which feels that getting back here amounts to, well, some kind of vindication.
Because there is another number at play; the 10 years since the last of his three all-ireland final wins is the longest that any manager has gone and survived to make the round trip.
in that time, the narrative of him being a gifted innovative force and an unrivalled tactician has become diluted, and in some minds, obliterated.
He has endured criticism of his management style – his former captain Seán Cavanagh labelled him autocratic – while he was subjected to an unprecedented snub two years ago when county board delegates voted down his request for an extension.
and in the outside world, the doubts about his competence have found oxygen. Elements in social media’s dark underbelly have typically spewed their rage.
He is aware of all that too, but not painfully so.
‘i really didn’t pay much attention to what people were saying honestly because i don’t do social media – it doesn’t bother me.
‘i am sure there is lots of vitriol out there against me but it has no power when i don’t read it. i’m sorry to disappoint those people.
‘and in the mainstream media if it happens, it happens.
‘i have learned long ago in life that i’m not to take praise too much to heart and therefore i won’t take the insults too much to heart either.
‘if good opinions come along we’ll take it and if other kinds of messages come my way i can put up the shield and deflect it and i can say “no thanks, i really don’t want your insult.” that’s the way i look at life and thanks to be god that is the case because i don’t think it should be the way to motivate yourself.’ What does? Making the most of what he has and winning of course, too.
in a game where success is measured by titles, there is a half full glass to view the last 10 years.
despite his group being in a constant state of flux, every other year he has taken them to the last four of the Championship.
given where he found tyrone football – they had reached nine semi-finals in 118 years – reaching five in 10 is hard to sell as a disaster.
and it is not as if their underage success has been prolific in that time – they have had all-ireland minor-winning teams (2008 & 10) along with the 2015 under-21 team. He has made some hay with the latter – eight of that team have seen game-time this summer with half a dozen likely to start on Sunday – which invites a comparison that this thing has come full circle.
Even allowing for the fact that there were nine changes in starting personnel between the 2003 and 2008 teams, Harte’s three Sam Maguire wins in ’03, ’05 and ’08 were fuelled by the back-to-back U21 winning teams he managed in 2000 and 01. But much has changed, not least the challenge he now faces.
taking down a great Kerry team three times in five years meant that those all-irelands came tinged in gold, but the dublin team he now faces is on a whole different level.
‘it is a more demanding task alright,’ he concedes, ‘because they have been able to create that life view that they’re all about attack but the truth is they are very much about defence as well and that’s what makes them difficult.
‘there is a perception that they are an all-out attacking team but they’re all very astute defenders as well. that’s the big challenge which you have to really study and interpret what they are doing very deeply.’
and it was his perceived failure to do that in last year’s semi-final, when they lost a game they were never in by a dozen points, which fuelled the narrative that the game had by-passed Harte.
rather than innovate, he stood accused of borrowing from the play-book of Jim Mcguinness – his chief tormentor in the first half of this decade – by setting up to try and contain the uncontainable.
it could be argued that it was an individual error – an overcooked niall Sludden pass opened the door for Con o’Callaghan’s early goal – as much as a systems failure which betrayed them.
Either way, there has been little evidence that it has sent tyrone down a more radical road.
Facilitated by the narrowing of an omagh pitch which he mysteriously but unconvincingly declined to take any credit for, they pushed up hard on Stephen Cluxton in last month’s Super 8s game at the death to eke out some joy.
But the pragmatist in him knows that if they are to have a shot against dublin, they have to stay in the game to still be in range to make it count.
that is why when they debriefed in the aftermath of last august, no babies were thrown out with the bathwater.
‘We didn’t produce that kind of football that day so we had to try and examine what happened.
‘that’s what we had to really reflect on. i don’t think it’s caused us to change a lot about how we play.
‘that’s the way we play, it’s the way that suits our players and that’s what serves us best.’
Whether that will be enough to stop a team who are on an unbeaten 27-game four-year run is another thing.
the consensus is that Harte’s winning record is a movable object when confronted by the irresistible force that is the three-tinmes champions
He, however, will see it as a final to be won.
‘We’re not in new territory – we are where we were in those years back in ’03, ’05 and ’08 against Kerry.
‘the thing is that we aren’t being given any hope this time in the eyes of many experts but that should not deter us from believing we can upset the odds and we believe we can upset the odds once again.
‘otherwise this won’t be a final that people will want to see.’
‘WE’RE NOT ON NEW GROUND, WE BELIEVE WE CAN UPSET THE ODDS HERE’