Mickey Harte: “I don’t believe a man should have to win his own ball. When it’s yours, you have it, why should you have to win it?”
Oisin McConville: “The only thing about it, Mickey, if you were still in charge, they wouldn’t have kicked it in to him in the first place.”
OISIN McConville and Mickey Harte spent enough years sparring and starring at the heart of Ulster football.
I can remember sitting as a young teenager in my next door neighbour’s house for both finals when the pair won their first senior All-Irelands, one as player and the other as manager, 12 months apart.
Mickey ‘Fox’ had invested in a widescreen plasma TV that was fixed to the wall.
Irish living rooms weren’t always built for these things. The obsession with sticky-outty fireplaces and making sure 50 per cent of the room was window meant the TV had to replace the Holy Picture on the one wall that could hold it.
We converged on All-Ireland final day. You had to hear every word of the commentary. You had to allow the atmosphere into the room. The volume was set at 60.
Mark Sidebottom was commentating and his pitch would start at an 8 and be close to 10 by three minutes in. Still he found ways to keep on raising his voice until, by the end, only the neighbours’ old dog Misty could hear him.
The fact you watched these games on BBC almost elevated them.
RTÉ was for wiping the lens of the camera and trying to keep it from blowing away in Salthill, or watching Ciaran Whelan swing off the Hill 16 crossbar on the sun-baked days when a Dublin goal was something you looked forward to.
But the big Ulster finals and the All-Irelands were always a BBC gig.
And then it all stopped. BBC stopped caring, stopped paying enough to cover the All-Ireland series, and eventually got squeezed out of Ulster altogether.
Then Sky came in and the rights got split up and the Beeb were cornered, seemingly unable to fight their way out of an argument they were only ever losing.
Since the GAA made that deal and introduced UK rights into the market, it has blown back in BBC’s face.
And for a long time, they just obliviously rode the storm, losing the sound of wailing GAA supporters behind the vroom of the North West 200 and the ribbiting crickets that made up half of the Irish League attendances.
This column, and many others, have routinely criticised BBC NI in recent years. They have deserved every bit of it.
For a generation, they have practically ignored the largest spectator sport that we pay them to cater for.
It has not been good enough and they’ve rightly had it in the neck.
Over the last few weeks, in broader terms, they’ve let nationalists down again.
RTÉ have taken an almighty hammering from all sides for the fact that their coverage is blocked off to viewers in the north.
It’s not an RTÉ problem. The IOC sells its rights on a geographical basis, and whether we like it or not, the north is considered part of the UK in those discussions.
BBC NI have the rights to the north but have done little to cater for those who wanted to follow Team Ireland, instead relying completely on the mainstream coverage from London, which was understandably Anglified.
But we must also be prepared to give credit where it is due.
Since Neil Brittain took over in the newly-created role as executive editor of sport in the autumn of 2019, the GAA has enjoyed hugely increased prominence on the Beeb.
He came from a role with the IFA’s communications team, which rightly or wrongly wouldn’t have inspired confidence that things would change, but he has made significant improvements.
Magherafelt’s Thomas Niblock, whose footballing ancestors seldom require introduction, has been the public face of coverage which has not only exploded in scale but in quality too.
It was just before Brittain’s reign began that it became apparent there was some wiggle-room when dealing with the GAA.
They had been mostly intransigent about any relaxing its broadcast agreements but with only two Ulster championship games set for live free-to-air coverage in 2018, a deal was negotiated to allow two more live games to be broadcast on the iPlayer.
On top of that, they’ve picked up on the club series and begun to show extended online highlights of all Ulster club games and the nine county finals around the province, as well as selected games in earlier rounds.
It has supplemented TG4’s brilliant coverage of the club game and quietly developed into an autumn service that would be badly missed if it were ever taken away.
Covid allowed for relaxations in the broadcast deal and BBC has benefited from that.
Ultimately, the acid test will be when the next broadcast deal is signed.
If the BBC are serious about it, they must move beyond just Ulster and into the National League, the Ulster Club series and the All-Ireland, all of which are accessible to them.
What they have done is struck gold in terms of their punditry team for the big games.
Arriving home just in time to flick the TV on for Saturday’s Ulster final, it was a non-contest in terms of whether to watch it on BBC or RTÉ.
Whether Oisin McConville and Mickey Harte actually dislike each other, it’s hard to tell.
What is certain is that they have polar opposite views on the game and neither man is afraid to express their opinion or stand their ground.
From the day of Donegal-Derry and Harte telling Oisin to “mind your language” over the use of the term ‘defensive football’, the pair have verbally jundied each other.
The following morning, the pair went on The Examiner’s podcast with Paul Rouse and continued the argument.
McConville has developed into the best pundit in the country. For a long time, TV shut out his personality but whether it’s licence or confidence or both, he’s begun to really shine in the last 18 months.
Harte’s presence alongside has led to a summer of the kind of debate that has been badly missing from the discourse in the last few years.
It’s almost accidentally become the perfect blend.
Harte was never shy of an opinion when he managed Tyrone but you would have wondered how much staying involved with Louth would temper his willingness to express it. Not a bit, it seems.
You can pick your side on any of the debates, but at least they’re happening.
It’s been thoroughly entertaining stuff. You can see the pair of them getting thick at times, but they’ve also been able to punch in a bit of humour too.
The exchange at the top of the page was from Saturday’s pre-match broadcast. Oisin laughed. Mickey smiled. Peter Canavan tried to hold it in but couldn’t. Sidebottom let it roll.
Two decades on, still sparring and starring.
Long may it continue.
