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It's all about the pace for Tyrone manager Mickey Harte

Tyrone manager Mickey Harte  
Tyrone manager Mickey Harte   Tyrone manager Mickey Harte  

Mickey Harte has observed plenty of developments in inter-county football since he took over as Tyrone manager in 2002. Cahair O’Kane spoke to the Red Hands boss ahead of Sunday’s Ulster final against Donegal...

TYRONE manager Mickey Harte believes pace will be king in Gaelic football for the foreseeable future.

The tailend of the 2000s saw the game submerged in a battle between the heavyweights and the speedsters. Cork were taking the game down a new path with their monstrous middle eight, physically pulverising teams with their powerhouses. But then Dublin and Donegal found a better balance. The broad shoulders remained useful, but the emphasis was on covering the ground at searing pace for 70 minutes.

And so the current Tyrone team was born. Which came first though, the chicken or the egg? So much of what Donegal did was founded on what Tyrone had done in the noughties. The high-intensity pressing, the gang tackling, the protection of their goal at all costs.

The Tir Chonaill men moved it on a level and, even aside from their All-Ireland win in 2012, their 2014 win over Dublin was probably the best counter-attacking performance Gaelic football has ever seen: “I think that Donegal’s development, or evolution if you like, was a development of all things that had gone on before,” said Harte.

“Football has been played for a very long time now, and teams are successful in different ways. Other managers and coaches will view what was successful for certain teams and see how much of that they could apply to the players at their disposal. I think that’s what Jim McGuinness did. He applied some of the things we had done, some of the things Dublin and Kerry and other teams that he might have admired. He brought it together and fitted it with the squad he had in Donegal.

“Then of course when they were successful with the way they went, people will take what they did. The more obvious defensive formations certainly came from Donegal’s ’11 and ’12 adventures. People are maybe putting their own slant on it and there is certainly a Donegal element in the development of the modern game, as there is of other teams before them who are successful.

“That’s the beauty of our game. It’s not a fixed or finished product, it’s always a product in the making and it will change because people decide to make a change to suit the players they have, learn from teams that have gone before, take what they think is valuable and you get a new version of what had gone before.”

By that stage, the game had been shepherded away from big arms towards big legs. And it’s Tyrone’s searing pace that took them to an All-Ireland semi-final last year, where they fell short because of attacking woes. It sounds a lot like the Donegal of five years ago, who recovered 12 months later to win an All-Ireland title.

This Tyrone side plays at times with 14 and 15 men inside their own half, yet Tyrone have averaged a remarkable 24 total points per game in this Ulster series so far. Their pace is crucial to the counter-attacking gameplan. Mickey Harte has remoulded the template he helped build, and he feels this one is here to stay.

“Pace is king at the moment and it is hard to see how it will change,” he said.

“Yes, you need to have certain skills and a certain skill level. But pace is definitely the key asset for players nowadays. At the same time, they must have the basic skills of the game as second nature to them. You can’t just get a load of athletes and win the games. The skill level hasn’t been eradicated altogether. There is a place for very skilful players and players with vision. There is a place for the high-fielders. But in the middle of that, you need a certain number of people with a lot of pace.”

When Tyrone won the last of their 13 Ulster titles, it was hardly cherished, with a bare handful of spectators coming onto the Clones pitch in 2010. While victory on Sunday might not evoke the kind of outpouring that Donegal in 2011 or Monaghan in 2013 did after 19 and 25-year exiles respectively from the podium, it’s still a warm feeling that Tyrone would love to experience again.

“Winning Ulster titles is superb and I suppose there are so many players on our squad now that don’t have an Ulster senior medal, then of course it is big for them, important for them,” said Harte.

“It’s big for all of us and big for the county. I suppose you could say it is a defining moment for us and our squad and people will ultimately judge on the narrow view of trophies acquired. I believe success is about much more than that, but it is very hard to convince people when you are without silverware that your progress is worth as much as you think it is. It’s nice to back up progress with silverware.

“I don’t see it as the end of the world if they don’t win it. It would be a setback and I would be disappointed for the players and all of us and the people of Tyrone. But I still think there is a quality side developing at the moment and sooner or later, we are going to see that quality.”

It could be season defining in more ways than one, though. A provincial title would be a progressive step, but also one that would send them down a Dublin-free path to the final: “It is a good incentive for anybody,” said Harte of being on the opposite side of the draw from the reigning All-Ireland champions.

“We all know that Dublin and Kerry have been the top two teams for a long while now. If you could avoid being in the same field as them for as long as possible, that would always be helpful.”