MICKEY Harte has angrily rejected claims Tyrone defender Tiernan McCann deliberately caused a horrific injury to Derry’s Brendan Rogers.
The Oak Leaf star needed 14 stitches to a facial wound following a clash with McCann in the opening moments of last month’s Dr McKenna Cup final. Derry manager Damian Barton said he would “prefer not to say too much about it”, but added: “People can make their own minds up about it, but it was shocking”.
However, Red Hand boss Harte insisted no malice was involved in the incident, claiming it was totally accidental: “What happened to Brendan Rogers, the injury was horrific, but the incident wasn’t horrific. The incident was very much accidental,” he said.
“I’d be disappointed at the way it has been coming out regularly since that happened. First of all, nobody wants to see any player getting injured. We very much regret that he had the injury he had, nobody wants to see any player injured. The outcome of the incident was horrific, the incident itself could not be described as horrific, more accidental.”
Harte has studied footage of the incident, which he says confirms Rogers’ injury was caused as a result of an honest challenge for the ball by McCann: “I have watched it numerous times and I can understand how it happened because Tiernan McCann was going forward, he reached in for a broken ball and to reach in for that broken ball necessarily meant his shoulder turned forward and, at that time, he clashed with Brendan Rogers," he said.
“If anyone wants to look really closely at the footage, if you thought that Tiernan McCann had any malicious intent, he would have been looking at the person that he intended to do that with. He has actually got his eyes on the ball, he turned his body to reach in for the ball.
In fact, I would believe that he wanted to take the ball and swivel away from the contact altogether in one go. But he reached in and didn’t quite get the ball and maybe they were just too close to each other and they hit, and that was very unfortunate for young Rogers, and we would never want any player to be injured like that at all.”
Asked if he was concerned at the tension building between two neighbouring counties who will have met five times this season by the time they clash in the Ulster Championship on May 22, Harte replied: “I don’t think any of that kind of emotional, highly charged content has come from us.”
Meanwhile, the Tyrone boss believes this weekend’s NFL opponents Galway are about to enjoy the fruits of recent underage success. The Tribes men won All-Ireland U21 titles in 2011 and '13, but that success has been slow to raise the county’s fortunes at senior level.
“That’s been coming a bit because of their U21 success. People have felt that they probably should have performed better than they did in the last couple of years," Harte added.
“But as we all know, it takes younger players a while to mature and now they have a few years of senior experience behind them, you can see that they’re growing in confidence, and they have a good mix as well of people with a bit of experience over the years along with those new and younger boys.
“Obviously, Kevin Walsh being back with them, he’s a good coach, he did well with Sligo. I think his heart has always been in Galway, now he’s back where he wants to be, so I think it’s a good mix to have there.”
Harte added that defeat at Salthill on Sunday would be a significant setback to Tyrone’s bid to make a quick return to Division One: “It’s never good to lose a game early in any campaign because it just puts you on the wrong end of the table and, if you’re on the wrong end of the table, then points are harder to come by when you need them at the end of the season.
“So I’d rather be pointing up towards the top of the table and trying to push on there.”
