IN one particularly memorable post-match interview with Mickey Harte last year, there were half-a-dozen or more journalists in a huddle around him.
The sun baked down and the visiting fans mingled happily on the pitch in Newbridge, with Tyrone having beaten Kildare.
This small sea of red and white seemed to form around the huddle, their ears tuned in.
The exchange went like this:
CO’K: You can see though the way you have played over last couple of weeks hasn't been as effective in Croke Park, it’s struggled against the better sides?
MH: “That's something you and some of the people in your business keep talking about. I don't necessarily agree with that.”
Why would that be?
“Because I don't believe it's true.”
You look at the games against Dublin and you probably had more joy last year (2018)?
“Did you look at the game we played against Dublin this year in the league?”
Yeah.
“And how did we do in that?”
But you were probably pressed a bit higher up that day?
“I'm not so sure we were playing very different than we played today. So let's look back and reflect on that, alright.”
A small bellyful of laughter rose up through the Tyrone fans. Harte smiled, feeling he’d won the day, as he often did.
I’ve always enjoyed those jousts. Harte is a man you can probe and look a bit deeper into. You’ll get answers out of him.
The more annoyed and agitated he is, the more revealing the answers.
That exchange was a window into his unwavering self-belief.
He argued that he was right in taking Tyrone away from the kicking game, reverting back to a deep-lying counter-attacking game that would flatten 26 of the teams in Ireland.
It all seemed to be well-founded when the half-time whistle went against Kerry last August. They had one foot in the All-Ireland final.
But then the Kerry press came on and the running game was suffocated, just as it had been each of the last five autumns in Croke Park.
It was their fourth semi-final in five years. A third defeat.
Those 26 teams they’d flatten are not the problem. It’s the other five.
The stat of not having beaten Dublin, Kerry or Mayo in championship since 2008 weighs heavy.
Sunday was evidence, albeit incomplete, that Donegal have now overtaken them too.
Declan Bonner’s side could not have been much sloppier. Patrick McBrearty didn’t play. Ryan McHugh was quiet, Michael Murphy in a deeper role away from goal and Neil McGee was off injured at half-time.
The hosts dominated the ball but only really played in a handful of short bursts. Yet that was still enough to beat a fired-up, more tuned-in and slicker Tyrone who played closer to their current grade on the day.
The brilliance of their club championship, a feast of attacking football beamed around the country, allied to the return of Conor McKenna, the emergence of Darragh Canavan and the 2021 Cathal McShane still to return have given Tyrone fans a giddy sense of themselves.
Those three have the bulk of their careers ahead of them but the problem is that the window for so many of the key men that pin it together is running very short.
Colm Cavanagh has gone now and is missed. Three of their other four Allstars, Mattie Donnelly, Peter Harte and Ronan McNamee, as well as Niall Morgan and Tiernan McCann, are turning the corner into their 30s.
If Tyrone haven’t won an All-Ireland by they slip the wrong side of their peak, then they won’t win one for a while.
The improvement of Kerry and the redevelopment of Mayo means the window is closing faster than they’d anticipated.
The period from 2015 to 2019 has been by many barometers a successful one, with two Ulster titles and five straight trips to the last eight of the All-Ireland series.
Higher expectations were created during the early part of his reign and the absence of that statement win over a big rival undermines the bare numbers of the last six years.
Patience on the ground has worn thin. Their public agitates, seeing a better class of forward and a more palatable style of football under the eye of another.
There’s also the issue of in-game management. The decisions to take off Niall Sludden against Kerry last year, and Darren McCurry and Darragh Canavan on Sunday causing discontent.
The style point remains a sticky one.
To watch Kerry over the last twelve months suggests that they’ve adapted to the ways of Dublin, themselves no strangers to having 14 men behind the ball.
All of the top All-Ireland contenders play a counter-attacking game that relies primarily on the speed of their transition from defence into attack.
Tyrone’s problem is not the style, but the execution.
Defensively they haven’t been able to nail down a solid unit, and as Mayo showed by cutting them for 1-19 last week, man-for-man would be a struggle.
There is an element of unreality about some of the notions that if Mickey Harte leaves, Tyrone will suddenly be playing diagonal kicking football to match the best of the early 2000s.
Dublin aren’t doing that any more. Nor are Kerry. Mayo try to, and it will undo them.
Tyrone are more predictable and the better teams find them too easy to play against.
Last year seemed like a step forward with the emergence of McShane as a scoring target man but Sunday’s performance does leave question marks.
There’s evidence that with the growing arsenal of attacking weapons, the 2021 version of Tyrone will look very different.
Mickey Harte has had the whole period of this team’s formation to mould it in his own style.
It is not to say that he has failed. But as has often been said about his own introduction in 2003, it was perhaps the fresh bounce the team needed after Eugene McKenna and Art McRory.
Anyone in Tyrone football will always give those two their due credit and there’s always wonder if they’d have won the All-Ireland anyway, given what was coming through.
We’ll never know. And Harte deserved his chance, having had such success at minor, under-21 and club level.
If Tyrone win an All-Ireland in 2021, he will have earned his credit by keeping the team around the highest end for six seasons.
Mickey Harte deserves to be remembered as he surely will, for the three they’ve won under his command.
But his quest for a fourth All-Ireland is his players’ quest for a first.
It just feels that for those whose time is drawing near to an end, they’ve earned the right to try something else.
