Chance to banish ghost of JBM

IT is August 1973. A miserable drizzle is falling on a Croke Park that isn’t near half-full for the All-Ireland semi-final between Cork and Tyrone and a teenage Mickey Harte is watching history repeat itself right before his very eyes.

Eleven months earlier, Harte was full-forward on a Tyrone minor team that fell three points short of Cork and an All-Ireland title in the same stadium and here was the same man who did for them in ‘72 doubling the dose a year later.

“I remember it well,” he recalls. “I was in Croke Park for that game (in ‘73) and obviously we wouldn’t have many fond memories of the day here in Tyrone.