Fr McAleer banks on sheer skill to topple champions

FR GERARD McALEER has had a long love affair with Tyrone football.

For over a decade, he and Mickey Harte have worked tirelessly to shape and mould a side capable of winning an All-Ireland SFC title.

They have seen their charges grow up as footballers and as individuals. They have looked on with pride at the way they have developed their talents. And now they hope to stamp their place in history.

"Mickey and I have always had the ambition to bring a team to win the Sam Maguire Cup. We were lucky that we got the opportunity to go through from minor to U21 and then on to senior."

The duo won the Ulster minor title in 1993, with Colin Holmes, Brian Dooher and Gerard Cavlan on board and four years later lost to Laois in the All-Ireland final. Twelve months later they were winners and followed with U21 titles in 2000 and 2001.

"We have worked with everybody. We know what they are made of," he says. "They know what our expectations are. We are not into blanket defence. We don't have 13 players back in the square. We have a very simple principle that when the opposition have the ball we are all defenders. When we have the ball we are all attackers."

He says he learned this lesson a long time ago at a coaching seminar from Kevin Heffernan.

"When you have the ball, the opposition can do nothing. It's our job to get the ball and keep it. If the opposition have it, it's our job to get it off them." It's as simple as that.

"Let's be real, we are not into fitness, we are into teaching a team to play attractive football by emphasising skills. And we bring all the other things that are necessary like fitness, diet and lifestyle. If you asked me what we have brought to the team as a management, I'd say it's this emphasis on skill, a disciplined approach to playing football and a disciplined approach to living their lives. It has proved a very sound recipe."

In terms of the team dynamic, Fr McAleer accepts without question that Tyrone are no longer over-dependant on Peter Canavan. He points to the influence of players like Brian McGuigan ("a quality player"), Brian Dooher ("a wonderful athlete") and Gerard Cavlan ("he has talent oozing out of him").

And, of course, there's Owen Mulligan: "people watching Owen play see him as brimming with confidence, but he's actually a very quiet and very modest fellow.

Nobody can say Tyrone is a one-man team any more."

Last year Tyrone people were as joyous about Armagh's success as everybody else. Certainly, that was how Fr McAleer reacted. He worked as a priest in South Armagh he once had Kieran McGeeney as an altar boy and later as a school principal.

During that period he taught a number of the current team players and they shared classes with Tyrone players Cormac McAnallen, Philip Jordan and Colin Holmes.

"I wrote to those Armagh boys last year. I was thrilled for them. But, football being football, I find myself being in opposition to them on Sunday. It's still only a game, on one hand. It's an awful lot more on the other. But, if we want to win the All-Ireland we have to be able to beat any team. And, what better team to beat than the reigning champions."