Mickey Harte league theory may be put to the test

It’s probably best to lay it all at the door of Mickey Harte.

It was the Tyrone manager who told us a number of years back that playing outside of Division 1 of the Allianz Football league practically guaranteed that you would not be competing for Sam Maguire in September.

Having spent the past few seasons rebuilding and yo-yoing with various Tyrone outfits between Division 1 and Division 2, Harte was well placed to assess the differences between the two tiers.

He even had the facts to back him up.

Since the NFL was rearranged into four divisions of eight in 2008, no county who finished lower than sixth in Division 1 has gone on to claim Sam Maguire.

I have good reason to know that it is 14 years since a team in Division 2 went on to win the All-Ireland SFC title. I was part of a Kerry team beaten in that 2002 final by Armagh. Having been relegated the previous season, Kerry were plying their trade in Division 2 that year as well and it is astonishing to think that not a single Division 2 team has reached the All-Ireland final since then.

As his side prepare to face Armagh in Omagh this evening, it would be interesting to ask Harte whether or he still believes his team, the standout side in the second tier since early spring, are incapable of launching a serious assault on the September summit.

I believe he may well have changed his mind this season.

There is little doubt that Tyrone have benefited from the two Ulster derbies they have already played, against Cavan and Derry, or that they will benefit even more from tonight’s game and next week’s finale against Fermanagh.

Of Tyrone’s Ulster rivals, only Donegal and Monaghan are above them in the league and both are on the other side of the Ulster Championship draw this year.

I’m sure Tyrone have their sights set on an Ulster title win later this summer.

It is a realistic target and if they were to arrive in Croke Park on August weekend having already secured three pieces of silverware, a Tyrone team with momentum would be difficult to stop.

There have been noticeable developments in their game recently, with some of last year’s All Ireland-winning U21 team seeing league action to supplement the championship games they experienced through the qualifiers in 2015.

Tiernan McCann has that rare quality of being faster with the ball than without it and his ghosting runs from way back the field have made the pantomime villain of 2015 a player of genuine substance.

But the real bonus for Tyrone so far this season has been the form of Colm Cavanagh as a sweeping midfielder.

Cavanagh has matured into one of the best covering midfielders in the game and anybody hoping to pierce a hole in what has, along with Cavan’s, been the meanest defence in the top two divisions, had better take Colm Cavanagh’s positional sense into account.

The nagging concern for Tyrone is that they can’t really tell where they’re at until they meet a team outside Division 2. Cavan, Galway and Laois pushed them to within a score in the opening three rounds, but all three victories were more comfortable than the scorelines suggest.

Their last two league matches, against Derry and Meath, have been won by nine and six points respectively, and, provided they don’t let up against Armagh and Fermanagh, they should canter towards the end of the league.

The fact that Tyrone have made a procession of Division 2 doesn’t lessen the intrigue ahead of the final two weekends.

Should Galway beat Fermanagh in Tuam tomorrow they have the potential to set up a winner-takes-all match away to Cavan next weekend.

For a side who have come close to returning to Division 1 only to fall short every time in the past five seasons, perhaps 2017 could be the year that Galway prove ready to compete with the big boys again.

It is only natural that Roscommon’s startling progress will have piqued their Western neighbours and players such as Fiontán Ó Curraoin, Tomás Flynn, Paul Conroy and Gary O’Donnell have been around long enough at this stage to deliver more than just latent potential.

If Damien Comer and Shane Walsh build on what we saw from them in 2015 and 2014 respectively, they might have something upon which to base a genuine crack at the Connacht Championship. Being the third ranked team in the smallest province will never be good enough for Galway.

Manager Kevin Walsh was very quick to point to their newfound resilient streak a after having salvaged an improbable late draw a fortnight ago but bigger tests lie ahead and whatever about taking two points off Fermanagh tomorrow, next Sunday in Breffni will reveal a lot more.

Cavan have the advantage of two home games to finish off their league campaign and appear well placed to return to Division 1 sometime soon.

The two games they lost narrowly were dour affairs against Ulster rivals Tyrone and Derry in early February, but recent hosings administered to Meath, Armagh and Fermanagh suggest that they are breaking faster out of defence than they previously did.

While it is only natural that much of the focus would be on Seánie Johnston having scored 2-13 in those three games, I believe the return of David Givney is just as significant in terms of offering a different type of attacking threat.

What goalkeeper, Raymond Galligan, brings in terms of accuracy on restarts should not be underestimated either. There are more high profile keepers in Division 2 but few better.

At the other end of the table, Meath, with two games away from home left to keep them in Division 2, appear in trouble. Both Meath and Cavan only missed out on promotion to Division 1 last year on scoring difference but losing home games to Cavan (conceding 1-20) and to Tyrone (conceding 1-17) appears to have holed them below the waterline.

Whatever happened in the second half of that game against Cavan in Páirc Tailteann, when they were outscored 1-15 to 0-4, Meath don’t seem to have recovered. It’s going to take a hell of an effort to keep them afloat.

While no team goes out to lose league games, there are always times when teams in a position of strength, such as Tyrone, can afford to experiment wildly with team selections, safe in the knowledge that losing two league points is of little or no consequence.

If Tyrone go flat out trying to finish off the league campaign in style over the next two weekends they could sink their fellow Ulstermen in Armagh and Fermanagh.

The last time Tyrone played Armagh in Healy Park in a match of consequence — the qualifier game of 2014 — Armagh won by 13 points to 10 in a fractious contest that petered out 20 minutes from the end.

I can’t help thinking things will be different this evening and there will be a different result too.

As for Tyrone competing as Division 2 champions for Sam in September?

Well even Mickey Harte isn’t always right, is he?