Harte looking for Tyrone to ‘stretch to new places’

For the third time, Mickey Harte will take his Tyrone team into a National League campaign as All-Ireland champions. The Red Hand boss shared his thoughts with Paddy Heaney...

Q Tyrone have tried and failed to defend their All-Ireland title on two occasions. You are now facing that challenge for a third time. What did you find were the main obstacles facing you during the years when Tyrone were the reigning champions?
A When building on any success, we all have to remember what we did to achieve that particular success.
Sometimes in the glory of savouring what you achieved, you forget the hard work that went into making that possible.
Maybe sometimes we can take our eye off the ball, and start to think that we don’t have to work as hard now that you have done it.
The facts of the matter are you probably have to work harder. Hopefully we will discover that this time.

Q While players often fail to manage success, the same can be said of managers.
One casualty of success is that managers often remain too loyal to the players who helped them achieve their goals.
Last year you dropped Ciaran Gourley, one of your stalwarts, for the All-Ireland final. Would you agree that managers also have to learn how to manage success?
A There are various ways of describing what is necessary in that instance. To my mind, the way of looking at that is that the team comes first. That is the philosophy that we all have to live by.
Everything we do has to be for the greater good of the team. Obviously that will require certain decisions at certain times.
I think when you buy into ‘Team Tyrone,’ you buy into that ethos and I am happy that our players are prepared to do that.

Q Are you ever fearful that the players who have now won three All-Ireland senior medals will struggle to maintain the desire which allowed them to attain this success?
A In any season, and that includes seasons in which we have won the All-Ireland, we seldom go over 70 or 75 collective sessions.
I don’t think that is unreasonable. But the players understand that they must do a lot more on their own. We are flexible enough now to allow those players to do those sessions on their own, at times that suit themselves.

Q By winning last year’s All-Ireland title you proved that Tyrone can succeed in the absence of Peter Canavan. But does this mean that expectations among Tyrone fans are now greater than ever?
A People can speculate as they will. We have to produce good performances. Only then can people make real judgements about what we are capable of.
I think it is good that the team evolved over the three All-Ireland series, and that different players, at different times, were involved in the various successes.
There has been an evolution, which is good. But if we are to continue to be successful then everybody has to continue working his shirt off.

Q Since taking over as the Tyrone senior manager you have often stated that you want to win every competition that your team enters. Last year you won the All-Ireland Championship after failing to win the Dr McKenna Cup or National League. Is it still your desired aim to win this year’s National League title?
A Maybe it is time to adjust the language. It is not necessarily about wanting to win the competition.
It’s about wanting to perform to the best of your ability in every competition. We would prefer to be fighting at the top end of the League rather than fighting to avoid relegation.
There is a fine line between those two positions. It is important to have good early form, but that is not easy when you consider that our early games are against Dublin, Kerry and Galway. The heat will be on early in the League to pick up some points. We would prefer to be at the top end of the League where we have a chance of reaching the final rather than fighting to avoid relegation.

Q In 2003 you sought advice from Bart McEnroe. Last year you included Caroline Currid in your backroom team and she acted as a link between you and the players. Will you stick to the same methods this year, or have you anything new in mind?
A You have to move on and find little bits of newness wherever you can find it. That’s not to say that people who you used in the past weren’t useful. Of course they are useful. But I think you always have to move on.
Sometimes it’s just about finding new angles to achieve the same objective. It’s about being innovative within the parameters of good practice.

Q In an interview last year you admitted that sometimes you didn’t communicate enough to your players on a one-to-one basis. In the same interview you revealed that this is an aspect of your management technique that you have consciously tried to improve.
If a manager continually exhorts his players to be the best they can be, is it important that the players can also see that their manager is making the same effort to be the best manager that he can be?
A I think that is true. There is always something that you can develop in your repertoire of skills.
No manager wakes up with all these skills. You have a certain amount of things that you are capable of doing to a certain level. Your ambition must be to bring your own skills to new levels. If I bring my skills to new levels then hopefully I can integrate those new skills into the team ethos.

Q The senior members of this year’s panel have been with you for over a decade. Is it a big advantage having a core group of players who have been programmed into the Mickey Harte school of football?
A Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. Maybe they have been programmed into doing things for themselves. It’s not about being programmed into doing exactly what I want them to do.
It’s about them being released to do what they are good at within the confines of what the team needs.
They are allowed to have their individuality, their uniqueness, their flair, along as it is in keeping with what is good for the team.
People must be allowed to have the liberty to do what they do well as long as it doesn’t militate against the team ethos.

Q Does that mean that you don’t agree with rigid gameplans whereby players are expected to follow specific instructions?
A It’s about good practice and good practice might take different forms at different times. It’s about allowing the players to decide what form good practice will take on any given occasion.

Q It must be a huge challenge trying to indoctrinate the notion of ‘good practice with no specific rules’ to a group of 33 players.
A Absolutely. Everything is a challenge. It is a process. But that’s what life is. It’s all about process. We want people to keep stretching themselves and to keep exploring what they are capable of.
To me there is never a ceiling on that, and as long as we can recognise that then maybe we can all stretch to new places.

National Football League
Division One

Kerry 0-12 Tyrone 0-9
Tyrone 0-7 Kildare 1-4
Galway 1-14 Tyrone 2-9
Tyrone 0-16 Laois 0-14
Tyrone 0-11 Donegal 0-9
Derry 0-14 Tyrone 0-10
Tyrone 0-15 Mayo 0-13

Ulster SFC
Quarter-final: Tyrone 2-8 Down 2-8; replay: Down 1-19 Tyrone 0-21 (aet)

All-Ireland SFC
Qualifiers round one:
Louth 1-10 Tyrone 1-18
Qualifiers round two:
Tyrone 0-14 Westmeath 1-7
Qualifiers round three:
Tyrone 0-13 Mayo 1-9
Quarter-final: Dublin 1-8 Tyrone 3-14
Semi-final: Wexford 1-14 Tyrone 0-23
Final: Kerry 0-14 Tyrone 1-15