Colin Sheridan: Tyrone under Mickey Harte was not a football team, but a revolution
Mickey Harte at the Cavan v Down game yesterday. Picture: INPHO/Matt Mackey
There’s a portrait of Mickey Harte that hits like a punch to the gut. A man that has experienced so much joy, and so much grief, yet this is a photo of his face in still life; not so much expressionless as inscrutable. Wisps of hair atop his head, like scorched grass.
A brow so furrowed, crops could be planted in them. Crows feet spread from the corners of his deep set eyes, like tributaries on an ordnance survey map. A boxer's nose.
The careless stubble of a recently retired company man. A half smile, framed in a down-turned mouth. Even if you never knew his pain, even if you never knew his glory, even if you never knew his name, you would know from one picture that this face contains multitudes.
It's the face of a solitary fisherman. It’s the face of a world champion. It’s Mohammad Ali. It’s Beckett.
Mickey Harte has been everything from prophet to pariah during his 18 years as manager of Tyrone footballers. Late last week, he didn’t so much drop the mic, as leave the stage and carefully pack it away. For all that time he was king, government and nation. Now, he has abdicated.
Human nature dictates that many of those who wished he stepped aside sooner have spent the weekend lauding his many accomplishments.
That is not hypocrisy, but testament to how much people care about football, especially in a place like Tyrone.
Harte was a God-like figure to many, but to others within the county he had become an obstacle to progress in the same way Arsene Wenger had at Arsenal, a club he reinvented. Those whispers of discontent grew louder these last few winters. Each Spring, Harte emerged undaunted with a new plan.
It's been 12 years since Tyrone's last All-Ireland triumph — in that time only Cork, Kerry, Donegal and Dublin have won All-Irelands. In a decade that saw Ulster bedfellows Donegal and Monaghan emerge as champions and contenders, Harte and Tyrone never went away. His longevity in the vipers' nest of GAA has been remarkable, but, for all Harte achieved on paper, his legacy will be the power of his personality.
While the re-emergence of Ulster teams in the 90s had somewhat desensitised the cosy cabal of Dublin, Cork, Meath and, of course, Kerry, this owed as much to the decline of that old order as to some progressive appreciation of new ideas.
Tyrone's arrival in 2003, on the other hand, was deemed downright offensive to the so-called purists and their many apologists. Their flagrant disregard for the traditional pecking order, best personified by their refusal to even acknowledge the ring, never mind kiss it, was a slap in the face to a Kerry team who seemed born to dominate a decade.
It may be an oversimplification to attribute that indifference to a footballing caste system to the fact that Tyrone, and their fellow counties north of the border, had bigger fish to fry as Kerry and other blue-blooded aristocrats were accumulating Celtic Crosses.
But those fish, also known as “the Troubles”, scarred many communities for whom going to Dublin in September and winning All-Irelands may have been the least of their worries.
In lesser hands, the brutal legacy of these troubles may have defined a generation of young men and women. Guided by Harte, it instead inspired them. He innovated and enabled. There was no 'lucky' All-Ireland. In an era of labels and hashtags, they defied every conceivable metric to become the team of a golden decade for football.
They did so against the backdrop of both personal and public tragedy. In Cormac McAnallen and Harte's daughter Michaela, the team lost both its captain and its surrogate sister. Harte lost his girl in the most unspeakable of circumstances.
The team's triumph, in that context, was not a sporting one, but a spiritual one. It transcended the game. It transcended faith.
It transcended tradition. It not only changed the way we saw Gaelic football, but arguably our attitudes toward Ulster and “the north”, too.
Despite all the tragedy, there was nothing to be pitied. The opposite. Tyrone challenged everything. They couldn't care less for your respect. But boy, did they get it. Tyrone under Harte was not a football team, but a revolution. Harte was its architect.
On Saturday, Peter Canavan spoke of the defining pillars of Harte’s life; faith, football and family. Over his 18 years in charge of Tyrone senior footballers he made this Holy Trinity One. Along the way, he may have alienated as many as he has converted.
People of principle often do this.
But, his ability to integrate many players and personalities at odds with his own proved an emotional intelligence often lacking in leaders of the LinkedIn generation.
The eulogies he has rightfully received since Friday will likely impact him none. He belongs in the club of Cody, Ferguson, Gregg Popovich and Bill Belichick. What sets Mickey Harte apart is his years of inter-county management was less a footballing journey as it was a sprawling odyssey.
One he could never have foreseen himself. He has more than earned his rest.
