Dublin v Tyrone: Tom Humphriestalks to Tyrone manager Mickey Harte ahead of a historic night and another long season

In that famous picture of Eoin Brosnan struggling to retain possession under the Hogan Stand as eight Tyrone players converge on him back in 2003, Mickey Harte stands in the background, impassive and inscrutable as a mandarin. He looks thoughtful, contemplative, a chess master thinking ahead.

No surprise than that when Mickey Harte finds himself back in Croke Park this week to play a league game in front of more than 82,000 people, he takes the chance as it comes and doesn't take recourse to railing against the hype.

Tyrone have been experimenting steadily through the winter, and being asked to unveil the results in front of a full house and a live TV audience might be disturbing for some managers.

Nor is Harte carried away by the excitement of starting a new year with such a bang. "Listen, it's just a real privilege and I'm going to enjoy it. There's a game to be played, there's two league points at stake. We have six other games to recover them if we do lose those points. It's a big occasion. The GAA have generated a new occasion and it's a once-off. This should only be happening in August and September, but it's a real bonus opportunity. We should embrace that, give it our best and enjoy it.

"In one way, too, people would look on it negatively, but this sort of opportunity doesn't come along too often. I think we are fortunate to be one of the first teams to play under lights in Croke Park. I see it as a privilege, not a disadvantage of any kind."

The approach is typical of Harte's measure. As is the team he has picked.

For seven weeks, all through the winter on Wednesday nights in Omagh, Tyrone have been running trials under the floodlights. Up to 60 players were brought in to be looked at. After that Tyrone put together an extended panel for training, which they worked with through December.

Harte estimates there are 45 players in contention for a squad place. Including people returning from injury. When the panel narrowed for the McKenna Cup, there were 17 new faces, all of whom got some game time.

The window of opportunity is narrowing for the postulants, however, a sense heightened by the decision of several colleges players to line out for Tyrone in January rather than UUJ or St Mary's.

Tonight in Croke Park there are just two additions to the starting 15 who will have Tyrone fans scratching their chins: Colm Cavanagh, the 20-year-old younger brother of Seán, and Colm Donnelly, a former prominent schools player with St Joseph's and a minor back in 2001.

They play knowing that other tyros are massed on the bench and several senior players, including Brian Dooher and Brian McGuigan, are on the way back from injury. Enough pressure for any player.

"We haven't got a finalised squad yet," says Harte. "We've been looking at players from the middle of October and through the McKenna Cup obviously. Each month the games will get more serious, the competition gets stiffer, that's when we will find out who is ready at the moment and who has a little bit to go yet."

Orthodox opinion in management circles would be that Tyrone should be looking to bring in a passel of new faces this year just to freshen things up. Harte has never been bound by orthodoxy, however. He questions everything till he gets an answer that satisfies himself.

"How important is it to have new faces? Well, it's about a sense of balance. You don't do it because people suggest it's a thing to do. You bring in new faces because you believe they will have a positive impact on the group you have. Change for change sake is something you have to be wary of. Change for effectiveness is good. If we have young players with the right approach, right dedication, that's a real bonus."

He has noticed with pleasure that not only has the senior team success affected the numbers playing the game in Tyrone, but it has altered the thought processes about training underage teams. A lot more science and imagination is going into training youngsters, right down to club and schools level.

Which is good, but doesn't automatically mean there is a massive reservoir of talent ready for the coliseum.

"Sometimes people look at club football and county players don't appear that superior. And the club footballer looks very good. People wonder why this player or the other isn't playing for the county team. Life's not like that. Some people excel at the higher level. Some don't. When a player comes back from county to his club there's a greater challenge for others to mark that player. The county player won't always have the energy or the drive to rise above it. So at club football the standard levels off and you wouldn't easily identify who is who.

"That's why it's hard to make a judgment in January. You're happy when you are winning. When you are experimenting and winning you are even happier, but you know there are harder tests ahead. People talk about strength-in-depth out of context sometimes. Strength-in-depth is only known and told when you are in the white heat of the championship or the late stages of the national league. Then you'll know.

"I'm happy with the progress we've made this January. We can go back to 2006 (when Tyrone won their fourth successive McKenna Cup) and I was happy too. After that things went a different way."

Things went a radically different way and in September Kerry won an All-Ireland by triumphantly reasserting their old values of catch and kick. They'd grafted tradition on to the lessons they'd learned from Tyrone about tackling.

Every manager in the country looked at Tyrone's swarm defence and wondered how to beat it and how to replicate it. The game kept evolving, however. Tyrone last year weren't the same style of team as they were in 2003. Harte is conscious of the dangers of standing still.

"I wouldn't be taking too much upon ourselves about how people play football. I don't think people play football in a certain way because of one particular team or one style of play. Those of us involved at this level, I think we look at every style of play and we try to take the best out of it as we see fit. We try to apply it with the players we have. You can't invent a Kieran Donaghy. Kerry have used a particular talent very effectively. Other teams have different ways."

This is a big year for Tyrone. A few years back two All-Irelands in three years would have been seen as an epochal achievement. That's done though, and there is a prevailing sense of Tyrone having more to offer. The underage structures are right, the balance is good. If injuries heal and appetites return, Tyrone are in a nice position.

Raymond Mulgrew, for instance, had a tough first season last year, the difficulties of coming into a successful side being exacerbated as that side fell apart through injuries. Mulgrew will have more confidence, weight and support this year and should be a huge asset. Niall Gormley and Cathal McCarron have showed flashes of attacking potential in recent weeks, while Harte has also experimented with the former underage midfielder Paul Rouse in a full-forward spot.

Much is expected too of Paul Marlow, the injury-prone 2004 minor defender.

Tyrone have a certain zest about them again, and it is odd to think that just 12 months ago, after the so-called Battle of Omagh, Dublin and Tyrone were being castigated as the sort of double act likely to corrode the moral fibre of the nation.

Harte laughs quietly and speaks with a politician's caution.

"Well, I think life is about balance and perspective and context. Omagh wasn't pretty. None of us set out to do that. There are many more encounters between Dublin and Tyrone which merit as much if not more coverage, in particular our two quarter-final matches in 05. It's time to move on. We get the chance to show the other side of Dublin and Tyrone."

You listen to Mickey Harte, back out at work in Omagh in October, just back from Dubai, where he managed the All Stars, facing into another year of massive expectation and a year where he is expected to inspire the trademark intensity in his players. You just wonder does it ever pall. Does he go to the well and find that there is nothing there?

"I don't find it hard. I'm in a privileged position to be involved with the Tyrone county senior team at this time, going to places we haven't been before. The day it becomes a chore is the day I shouldn't be there.

"I never switch off from Gaelic games. It's in my blood, and in my head I think that's what your waking moments are for. They're for thinking about Gaelic games. That suits me fine."

Curtain up. Show on the road again. No business like it for them that has it in their blood.