‘Don’t be disparaging just because it’s different’

HE IS one of the GAA’s ‘can do’ figureheads, a devotee to the power of positive thinking and a two-time All-Ireland winning manager.

Yet it took Mickey Harte 40 years to even contemplate the possibility of getting his hands on the Sam Maguire Cup.

Much of that was down to the environment he grew up in. In Ulster in the 1970s and ‘80s, the Anglo-Celt Cup was the limit of ambition. August and the trip to Dublin might have been part of the reward for the provincial winners, but it was almost always a poisoned chalice.