Harte takes consolation from level of performance

Mickey Harte’s instinct when Marty Duffy blew the final whistle was to make a beeline for the referee and ask why he had failed to award Tyrone a free seconds earlier after Sean Cavanagh was bundled to the floor.

Maybe Duffy expected as much because the Sligoman was halfway to the dressing-rooms before Harte could take two steps and the three-time winning All-Ireland manager left it at that.

By the time he shared his thoughts with the media, the matter was all but closed. A drop in an ocean of actions and deeds on a day when little or nothing had separated the two sides.

“Many times you would get a free for it,” he said. “The referee chose not to give a free for it this time. It’s his call and we have to go with that. He has to make many decisions in his lifetime across the game, he is not going to get all of them right, and if he gets the majority of them right he is doing his job.”

This was, he admitted, one that got away but he preferred not to focus on the oh-so-close loss of a first Division one title in ten years and instead drew attention to the benefits of a game that was settled by mere chance as much as anything else.

“People talk about results and performances and you can get a result that is good and a performance that is mediocre and sometimes you get a decent performance and a poor result and maybe this was one of those days.

“It was good for those new players that were playing in a league final for a first time, the fact that they competed well. There was no secret in the fact that Dublin were the in-form team throughout this league.

“They were scoring for fun and they were playing with a lot of confidence and that we were able to match them for so long was encouraging even if it doesn’t give you any trophies unfortunately.

“We will take consolation from the level of performance that we reached but is no yardstick of how we will be later on. We must reach that level of performance if we want to be competing in the summer.”

Ballybofey calls them now. Donegal await. Harte didn’t agree with the assertion that the priority yesterday was to avoid any injuries which may compromise that particularly taxing assignment but the news was nevertheless healthy on that front.

Conor Gormley and Aidan Cassidy limped off before the end but not with anything that will give cause for concern long-term while the news on Stephen O’Neill was equally upbeat despite his late withdrawal yesterday.

“Yeah, it was a very unfortunate freak kind of thing. Stephen was just doing the warm-up and accidentally stepped back on top of a football and he went over on his ankle and went down. He was not going to be able to play because it was too sore to be able to twist and turn — and then imagine some-one pulling and tackling you after that — so he just knew between himself and the physio that it was not going to work today.”