TYRONE manager Mickey Harte said he was disappointed to learn that fierce rivals Armagh have been relegated to Division Three.
Speaking after his side drew with Fermanagh, Harte said that the Orchardmen could consider themselves unfortunate to return to the third tier after just one season in Division Two. Armagh finished off their campaign with draws against Galway and Harte’s Tyrone, and a win against Derry, but their fighting finish wasn’t enough to save them.
“I would rather see Ulster teams stay in as high a division as possible,” said Harte.
“It’s a pity that Armagh are going down because they showed a lot of fight in the last two games. It should have been enough keep them up but unfortunately not. We know the mathematics ourselves, we went down last year on tight margins. It’s a fine margin that keeps you up or puts you down.”
Meanwhile, Harte’s Tyrone side can now look forward to the Division Two final against Cavan. The Red Hands beat Cavan by two points in their League opener and Harte said he was delighted that they recovered form a poor start to force their way into the top flight with five wins on-the-trot.
“I’m delighted there’s another Ulster team in Division One, that’s for sure, so we’ll be parochial about it,” he said.
“That’s what’s good about it, it means there’ll be extra teams in Division One from Ulster next year, and Cavan and Tyrone have been progressing over this last number of years. We saw what they did with the U21s four years in-a-row and maybe while they didn’t build and get the result of that at U21 level, actually they’re getting it at senior level now. So four U21 titles in-a-row is bound to be good for a team that’s progressing, and Cavan seem to be making that progress now.
“It’s a kind of a polar opposite to ours. They lost their first two matches, and people were writing them off for various reasons. We didn’t stumble at all until our last two games, which we could have lost just as easily as won.
“So probably we’re on a different curve than they are, and I don’t like that at the moment, so we’d need to check our curve and get it going upward again.”
