Harte proves trust is key to player management
If a manager can get players to buy into the ‘collective objective’ and get them to show genuine leadership and take ownership of their journey.
A dressing room where the attitude is wrong and morale is poor is on a hiding to nothing. Even a team laden down with skilful players will still be shown the exit unless the mood in the camp is spot on.
Mickey Harte is a very special manager and has brought Tyrone from having never won a senior All-Ireland title to landing three in the space of six years.
A key component of that success is his ability to gel players and get the best out of his squad. There is a great loyalty to one another in the panel and for the majority their bonds have been shaped by tragedy with the deaths of Paul McKirr and Cormac McAnallen two particularly tough blows to Tyrone football.
Harte was manager of the Tyrone minor team that won the 1998 All-Ireland title, which was captained by McAnallen, and 11 of the 24 who togged that day went on to win senior All-Ireland medals.
The likes of Pascal McConnell, Kevin Hughes, Stephen O’ Neill, Eoin Mulligan and Enda McGinley all won minor medals that September and Brian McGuigan, Philip Jordan and Ryan Mellon were on the bench. They have known no-one else in charge of a Tyrone team only Harte and that kind of longevity and mutual commitment is impossible to quantify and is a key reason for the team’s continued success.
Francis Mooney is a freelance sports journalist in Tyrone who has followed the county footballers for over 30 years and he is adamant that Harte is integral to the county’s success. “Mickey tries to keep the panel like a big family and everyone has a part to play. You don’t hear of any dissent in the squad and he keeps everyone involved, giving the fringe players some game time during the league even if they don’t get any in the championship.
“His decisions are always based on merit and based on form in training and what is the right thing to do for the good of the team. He has always been like that and the players know that is how he operates.”
Harte is not afraid to make changes in personnel and in their maiden All-Ireland success of 2003, he used 27 different players in their championship campaign. That fluidity in use of players has continued and in the six years from 2003-2008, 51 different Tyrone men have worn the county jersey in championship action.
Tyrone seem to have a steady stream of young players who are chomping at the fence to get into the senior squad. And that is not by chance. The underage structures in Tyrone leave most counties in the shade.
They have a U14 school of excellence and U15 football development squads and not unlike Brian Cody in Kilkenny, Harte seems to have a personal knowledge about the vast bulk of the younger talent coming through in the county. Over the past decade or more Tyrone have established top quality under-age structures. They have built on the success of their senior wins and are continually proactive and progressive rather than resting on their laurels.
Mooney explains how the underage structures got off the ground.
“Two school teachers, Terry McCann and Enda Kilpatrick came together about 12 years ago and helped put the right underage structures in place. They have to take a lot of the credit for being so methodical and putting the systems in place that are being funded by Club Tyrone. We were very fortunate to get an exceptional group of players to come together at the same time as Mickey Harte. They are unbelievably dedicated and ambitious in what they want to achieve and the profile of the game is huge in the county. Mickey and the players are learning all the time and they are prepared to adapt to different situations. They are at one with the system.”
Players respect the need to focus on the “greater good” and the “bigger picture” is always advocated. Very few managers or counties could expect a situation where Brian McGuigan and in particular the experienced Ciarán Gourley take being dropped for an All-Ireland final as well as they did last September.
The team ethos comes first at all times and it is fair to say that the synergy in the Tyrone dressing room has been unsurpassed by any other football team in the past decade.
Little things matter, and they are acted upon in Tyrone. When things were going a bit stale last year Harte brought in Caroline Currid, a performance coach from Sligo, to act as a go-between for Harte with the players and it meant there was even greater trust and as much control on-field as off-field.
The subs are always listed in alphabetical order. It may seem irrelevant and yet it decrees that no one is more important than any other.
In Harte, Tyrone have one of the most intelligent managers in the country. He is cool and calm on the sideline and he now has the senior players like Dooher, Cavanagh, McMenamin, Jordan, O’Neill, Mulligan and Gormley who can recognise any problems that may arise during a game and are not afraid to take measures to rectify them.
By handing a huge degree of responsibility to his players, Harte has empowered them to do the right thing no matter how chaotic things are on the field of play.
