Harte braced for player retirements
Tyrone manager Mickey Harte says it is inevitable that some of his players will retire in the wake of last night's All-Ireland SFC quarter-final defeat to Dublin.
In the aftermath of the 0-22 to 0-15 loss at Croke Park, Harte admitted: "There is always change in every squad every year and I think people are thinking too narrowly to say that this is a team that is going to disappear all in one go.
"I mean that is not the case. There are some players that are near the end of their careers and they will make a decision that is right for them."
A number of players have excelled throughout Tyrone's three All-Ireland title-winning campaigns since 2003, including the likes of Brian Dooher, who turns 36 next week, Ryan McMenamin (33), Kevin Hughes (31) and Brian McGuigan (31).
It remains unclear whether they or others in the Red Hands panel will call it a day. However, Harte is not expecting wholesale changes for next year.
"There will be no wholesale turnover and as you would look through the team that started today, there are not many elder statesmens that started the game today. So leave everybody to make their own decisions in their own time.
"I suppose it is inevitable when people have been playing at the top level for 10, 11 or 12 years that they may have to consider what they are doing.
"But this is not the time to consider that and I certainly would respect them to make their own mind up on things like that."
Harte is one of the longest serving inter-county managers in either football or hurling, but he himself has no intentions of bowing out just yet.
"I'm there next year anyway. There's no contract or anything else but I agreed to be going on for another year so I don't see any reason why that would change," he explained.
Asked where it went wrong for his side last night, the Ballygawley man expressed his disappointment with the Tyrone display and praised Dublin for their efforts.
"It's most disappointing when you put in a huge effort all year and probably your hopes are pretty high because we performed well in the qualifiers after losing to Donegal.
"You do hope that you have the momentum coming out of that to be able to match most teams, but sometimes you have to face reality as well and you have to accept that Dublin are a much better team than us.
"They played much better football, adapted to the conditions better than we did and got some magnificent scores. When you are up against that, it's very hard to beat it."
Harte added: "I would say that at one stage we were looking worse than what it was at half-time but not long before we probably could have closed the game to 0-9 to 0-6 and that would have been a flattering position to be in - but fairly useful to be in that position.
"The way Dublin were playing we were really going to find it very difficult to claw back the deficit that existed and still go on and beat them. And that's how it proved in the second half."
