Harte set on closing gap at top in Ulster

It wasn’t that long ago that they talked of a big two in Ulster, a closed shop comprising Mickey Harte’s Tyrone and Armagh.

At different points, Fermanagh, Monaghan and even Antrim popped up to challenge that established order but Donegal, well, Harte didn’t worry about them too much when he was collecting his county’s first three All-Ireland titles.

As he faces into 2013, however, and the greatest challenge of his career, to win another All-Ireland with a new Tyrone team, the Errigal Ciaran man accepts they have slipped very much into Donegal’s slipstream.

It is a new place for Tyrone to be and, if Harte is completely honest, he’s surprised to find himself discussing Donegal’s ascent to the summit of football’s pecking order.

“I probably am surprised at how quickly they progressed,” said Harte. “I would like to put on record that I wasn’t one of the critics of their semi-final defeat last year.

“I said they did what they had to do. They did it and they weren’t alone in making that a very ultra-defensive game [against Dublin]. But I am probably surprised they have made such strides in the last 12 months.

“I thought they were around the top table. But I thought it would take a bit more time for them to be as prolific in front of goals in terms of the amount of scores they could get, based on the system they were playing last year.

“But they made that progress quite rapidly and more quickly than I thought they would. As a result, they are All-Ireland champions and they are champions because they got more scores this year than they did last year across the board. That was the key to their success.”

Back in 2003, the tactics that Harte employed to help Tyrone to the first of those three Sam Maguire successes, were hailed as revolutionary. It is hard not to think that he is entirely consumed now on the challenge of reeling in Donegal and, morespecifically, Jim McGuinness, who has stolen Harte’s mantle as the most tactically astute boss in Ulster.

Ironically, Tyrone came closest to defeating Donegal in this year’s championship, with Martin Penrose denied a late goal by a stunning Paul Durcan save in the Red Hands’ two-point Ulster defeat.

“When you take Sean Cavanagh, Ronan O’Neill and Kyle Coney out of our attack that day and still to hold them as close as we did, I suppose we can take some consolation from that,” said Harte. “Ultimately, the bottom line is that we didn’t win the Ulster title though, and we didn’t get to the latter stages of the All-Ireland so you’re clutching at straws. We just weren’t in the same league as Donegal this year.”

The return of those three players, and particularly ex-Footballer of the Year Cavanagh, to duty in 2013 after injury should help them close the gap somewhat.

“Sean Cavanagh has been back playing club football for the last few weeks, his rehabilitation seems to be almost complete at this stage,” revealed Harte. “Ronan O’Neill, it will take him until January, it was a cruciate ligament injury he got early on in the year.

“Kyle Coney has had an additional problem in addition to the tendon, he had a hernia operation a few weeks ago so he is recovering from that now. With the next few months at his disposal he should be ready too for the new season.”

They won’t be the only old friends to be welcomed back to Tyrone in 2013, Division 1 football will be warmly embraced too.

“Division 2 can be very competitive and I think it was more competitive the year before last, but it is a fact — if you are not meeting the top teams in the spring time then you are not getting the same preparations as the teams that are there,” he maintained. “I think that’s undeniable.”