Donegal’s Indian sign over Tyrone not a concern for Mickey Harte
After four Ulster SFC defeats in five seasons, it’s not as if they lack incentive but Mickey Harte refuses to believe Donegal have a psychological edge.
“Any of these things, people can easily say that when they just look at the outcome of the game, the result. ‘The result says something’. But I have to look at the performances in all of those games. I have to say to myself, in all of those games, were we no-hopers and just could not beat this team? Or did events on the day conspire to knock us on the wrong side of the result? If that’s the way you look at it, then I believe anything’s possible.
“If we were going in there as a beaten docket every time we met them, and not even getting close, then I’d say that outlook would concern you. But I don’t see life that way, so it doesn’t concern me.”
Ask Harte to pick out which of those four defeats — the two semi-final reverses in Clones in 2011 and ‘12 followed by the brace of losses in the preliminary round clashes in Ballybofey in ‘13 and ‘15 — and he strikes a bemused look.
“It’s like saying ‘which is your best All-Ireland?’ They all had their part to play in the emergence of Donegal and the apparent decline of us.
“I say ‘apparent’ there because there was a lot of transition happening within our team. I think people missed the point a bit. While we may not have been as successful as we had been for the previous eight or 10 years, we were still playing at a very high level and we were still a match for most counties. Therefore, we couldn’t have been that much in decline.
“We didn’t have the trophies to show for it that people would judge you on in that finer term of judging success, but we still didn’t feel we were falling away from the leaders. We felt we were chasing them and not that far away from them.”
Truth be told, all four of them impacted on Harte in some way, from the 2011 game where they started like a rocket only to be largely shut out in the second-half to last year in MacCumhaill Park when they had two late goal chances to level it up.
“In 2011, I think we were in a very good position to win that game early on. I’d be very disappointed we weren’t more efficient in front of goal. I think if we had been, we could have had that game won before Donegal decided they could win it. The loss of Joe McMahon that day was critical as well.
“The second time then at Clones, Lady Luck didn’t shine on us. Martin Penrose had a wonderful shot that was going into the corner of the net, and the large foot of a very good goalkeeper (Paul Durcan) got to it. It went up off the post and across the goals, Colm Cavanagh was coming in and just missed it. Things like that. Near the end of the game, Marty Swift went up for a ball. There could be a suggestion that it might have been a foul but the referee decided that it wasn’t so it wasn’t. That got them their second goal and clinched that game as well. On fine margins do results often come. We probably were on the wrong end of them those days.
“Again, last year in Ballybofey, after an abysmal performance in the league, I think we came back and had a wonderful performance. Again, there were all kinds of things going on, we could have got another goal at the end to get a draw out of it. We’d performed so well in comparison to the league.”
Unlike their last Ulster final appearance in 2010 when Monaghan’s snooping forced Harte to move training around the county, there is plenty of privacy in their impressive Garvaghey complex opened in 2013, just a four-minute drive from Harte’s house in Ballygawley.
With Donegal’s own training centre in Convoy close to the Tyrone border, confidentiality these past couple of weeks has been key for both counties. “It’s not the Secret Service or anything,” Harte smiled. “Sometimes, it’s good to move anyway because if you have been in the same place for a long time, it is refreshing to go somewhere else. We are fortunate too that there are plenty of clubs in Tyrone that welcome the Tyrone senior squad coming there.”
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