Stamping their place in football history

MICKEY HARTE is flicking through the breakthrough moments of a breakthrough year.

The first occurs in Parnell Park, on the 16th day of February. It is strange date to bookmark as on this miserable Sunday afternoon, his Tyrone charges suffered their second defeat of the Allianz NFL campaign going down by a single point to the Dubs.

Yet there was something about the moment which sticks in Harte's mind, the morning after an All-Ireland SFC Final victory.

"We played well enough that day to beat Dublin, with a whole lot of men missing and I knew that when the players would come back, we had the potential to go very far. I believed at that time that we could win the National League and we could win the All-Ireland," he added.

Now press fast forward to the championship and a broiling Sunday afternoon in mid July in St Tiernach's Park. The weight of favouritism weighed heavy on the Red Hand County. And it nearly cost them dearly. Yet the lessons were invaluable.

"We went into the final with Down as red-hot favourites and for a particular period of the match we lost control of ourselves and almost lost the match. To come back from nine points was exceptional, but the last three were even more exceptional, when there was only five or six minutes to go.

"We had been hit with another sucker punch and that I think was a real defining moment in the season!"

Or at least it was until Sunday afternoon when Harte and his team stamped their place in football history. The genial manager claims that he never doubted his team's ability to win a first ever Bank of Ireland SFC as long as they were reasonably in contention in the game's final phase.

"It always is in any game when you are two or three points up and into the concluding stages, with the other team needing a goal and pressing for a goal. There's always a chance, always a risk. But, I had every confidence in our players, that they had the bit between their teeth," he commented.

"Armagh are renowned for their last 15 minutes. They built their reputation on that. That was obviously one of our key targets to match them at least in that period. And, we had to do that with everything we had in our power.

"People had said we needed to be 'so far ahead' to cope with that, but we didn't particularly feel that. We felt that if we were anywhere ahead at all, or anywhere in the game, we should challenge them in the last fifteen minutes.

"That should be our chief target. That is what they build their game around, so we had to be able to challenge that!

"It was incorporated into our ordinary training, but psychologically, mentally and verbally, we were prepared for that scenario. A special button was to be pressed that this was the time to go even stronger than we had done before and I think the players did that."

But it was more than heart, and keeping their heads on the battlefield. Harte felt their victory was a vindication of their 'scientific' training approach, with their preparations about quality rather than quantity.

"I think it's great to show that you can get through to All-Ireland level with two nights a week training and one game at the weekend. The other interesting statistic is that the final was our 21st match and we never played a single challenge match in the entire year."

Coping with injuries and the unavailability of players had been on-going through the season, but coping with the potential loss of Peter Canavan was different, he concedes,

"We knew there wasn't 70 minutes in him and we also concluded that it was vital he was there at the beginning and ultimately vital that he was available at the end if at all possible. And that was exactly how it panned out."

Now to the future. Harte knows from talking to Joe Kernan that Tyrone should 'enjoy' this triumph, in the knowledge that they are the new target for aspiring teams.

Declining to make any 'bold predictions,' he promised that they would continue to learn every day they go out and 'hopefully' apply that learning to become a better team!

"I can only equate what happened in Errigal Chiaran in 1993 when we won the first Ulster club title and I think our club is living on the value of that ever since," he explained.

"I believe it will do the same for Tyrone as a county, that it will bring on the next generation of players with a new sense of purpose and a new sense of belief.

"We have footballers who have learned to cope with all kinds of opposition, with taking big hits and going on to play their own game plan and that's a good sign of the character of the team.

"I suppose it will take us a little while longer to get to the fine detail of what we can learn to make us a better team!"