If Mickey Harte ever admits he didn't see the Donegal whirlwind coming five seasons ago, then he can be forgiven. Nobody did. But it has sometimes been forgotten that no county was affected by the high-velocity impact which Donegal made on championship football as the Red Hand county.
The league meeting in March of 2011, when Jim McGuinness’s very young team raised eye-brows by coming into Healy Park on a turbulent Saturday night and posting a 1-11 to 0-6 win was, in retrospect, a sign. But Tyrone were back-to-back Ulster champions and still had the framework of its three-time All-Ireland winning team.
Who, that night, would have guessed that after two decades of nothing, Donegal would contest the next four Ulster finals, winning three. Who would have ventured that night that Tyrone would not be seen in Clones on the big day out throughout that time? That is why Sunday’s afternoon’s meeting in Ballybofey – a prelude to the May 17th championship meeting at the same venue – won’t require any salt or pepper.
A month ago in Castlebar, Harte gave perhaps his most revelatory interview in years. It lasted just five minutes and took place at pitch side minutes after Tyrone’s hard-working, pressing, relentless pressing game had completely snuffed out Mayo’s attack.
Harte is a league veteran and has seen them all, from dog fights to freewheeling spring classics but he was almost giddy after this win.
That was understandable. It felt to those watching that Tyrone had tapped into a reserve of hunger that had eluded them for a while.
Harte had experimented with an expansive, attacking game for a couple of seasons with mixed results and stayed on even after the gigantic figures of Tyrone’s peerless years – McGuigan, Dooher, Mulligan, Hughes, McMenamin, O’Neill and, just last January, Conor Gormley – shuffled off.
He caused unrest in his own county by hastening the departure of seasoned winners like Martin Penrose and Joe McMahon and, for the first time in his career, has heard sustained expressions of discontent about his regime.
Hapless opening
After a hapless opening league night against Monaghan, Harte and Tyrone went back to basics and after watching his side frustrate the role he gave an insight into his view on football.
“Who plays defence? Who plays attack? Who plays anywhere? I think nowadays that positions don’t mean much. When we don’t have the ball everybody is a defender and when we have the ball everybody is an attacker. It is a complete game now, it is a perpetual motion type affair and you need to be able to stick it for 70 minutes if you are going to contest at the top level.
“It is a huge energy game in the modern game because nobody stands around waiting for the ball to come to them or think that they have a certain department that they should occupy. It is about fluid movement within the team and if you have players who are prepared to commit to that, then you will be competitive. It is about seizing the moment. Sometimes there is an opportunity to win games and you have to take it.”
Because Tyrone have not been contesting major finals of late, Harte’s extraordinary influence on the coaching and tactical evolution of Gaelic football has been too seldom mentioned.
There were signs in Castlebar that he is not that far away from realising what would surely be his greatest accomplishment: creating a brand new team capable of disturbing the establishment- again.
It is still in embryo: Tyrone went to Croke Park and but for a late goal by Dean Rock would surely have registered a rare home defeat on Jim Gavin's Dublin team. They stung Cork for 2-10 but lost by a single point. Relegation is a distinct likelihood for the loser of tomorrow's Ulster derby in Ballybofey.
So Tyrone are at a crossing point of their season. As he spoke that afternoon in Mayo, Harte smiled at the reference to former players who were among those criticising the contemporary Tyrone set up. The dismantling of a revered team is difficult for the public to witness. What was too quickly forgotten was that Harte had put that team together in the first place. The changes he made were to try and maintain Tyrone as a competitive force and that meant bringing new players through.
“Some of them may do and some may not but you have to give people time to mature and deliver the best of themselves. Sometimes people give their best and it doesn’t return the trophies they would like and sometimes life is like that as well. Sometimes it is very black and white from certain perspectives and I have to allow people to be as ignorant of the facts as they want to be.
“For all those who think they are hurting me by what they are saying, I am sorry to disappoint them because 99 per cent of it I don’t even read.”
If there was a note of defiance in that, so be it. It is likely that neither Rory Gallagher nor Harte will want to show their full hand on Sunday but it is no secret that Donegal have struggled to play into the defensive system which they employed with such devastating results under McGuinness.
Their recent 0-9 to 1-4 defeat in Letterkenny was the most vivid example of that: Donegal became mired on a windy day in the Monaghan wall. The home disenchantment was such that on Highland Radio the following evening, Martin McHugh wondered if the time hadn’t come for Donegal to abandon the system they made famous.
“I suppose the interesting about it is that Tyrone went down to Mayo and put all their players behind the ball and they won. Looking at the game yesterday, both teams played very, very defensive and it was a terrible game to watch. I look at it from a Donegal point of view and I know we created this monster ourselves and we won an All-Ireland win it.
‘Orthodox football’
“But I don’t think it suits our style of football. It is just not in our nature and it never was in our nature going back to a long time ago. So I think that from Donegal’s point of view there are decisions to make there. Are we better going out playing orthodox football and letting lads express themselves? We have the best full-forward line in Ireland but they haven’t got a chance of playing the way that we are playing and the way teams are playing against us.”
But the conundrum is that even if they wanted to, Donegal are going to meet plenty of sticky, defensive, counter-attacking teams, sides that are a reflection of themselves.
Harte has dusted down his old play book and decided that if his players are hungry and honest enough, it can work just fine. A win against the very county which knocked them off balance would be a good sign that they are close to resuming normal service. Donegal and Rory Gallagher know what is coming and will be primed. This is a league game and then some.
Richter scales at the ready.
