Happy Harte vows to give country competitive final
Ten years it’s taken them to negotiate the penultimate step.
A decade not so much lost as marooned in the no-man’s land between nowhere and somewhere.
They had been turned away in four All-Ireland semi-finals since 2008. Another hat-trick of quarter-final exits added to the hurt.
A fine Cork side had their number in 2009.
Dublin accounted for them thrice, Mayo twice and Kerry hastened them towards the dark regrets of winter in 2015.
Each defeat was absorbed, farmed for pointers and shelved before the summit was attempted again.
Mickey Harte took time to empathise with Monaghan on the end of their latest odyssey but there was an obvious relief about him, too.
A joy that they have ceased tilting at windmills and migrated on this summer’s warm weather front as far as September.
“If you have been in four semi-finals and go home with nothing to do for the next month, only watch other teams go for it, there is an awful sense of anti-climax. We know the people of Tyrone. They love their football and love to get energised by it.
“And we felt for the last number of years that we kind of let them down somehow. They just wanted to express themselves in terms of being here on All-Ireland final day. Maybe we got a wee bit spoilt with three in five years in the Noughties.
“But still there is a longing in the people of Tyrone to be here on All-Ireland final day and we always felt we were playing for them.
“That’s what we do it for. We don’t do it for ourselves. We do it for those good people who travel miles and miles to support it.
People who have family issues where football brings them some consolation. So, it’s not just about Gaelic games or about playing football. It is about the well-being of the people in your county.
He didn’t need telling that it was tight.
That all it would have taken was a different decision here or a bounce of the ball there and it would have been Malachy O’Rourke sitting in his chair feeling the rush of victory course through his body.
But Harte felt that Tyrone’s greater experience of days like this played a part. They’d been patient. Paid their dues and took the odd licking, not least this time last year when Dublin left them for dust and a dozen points short in the semi-final.
That’s a day that will be used in evidence against them this next three weeks. Proof that all the foreboding over a one-sided final is justified. But Harte has to believe that Tyrone can complete the course. What’s the point in sitting the exam otherwise?
He could have presented their recent Super 8 meeting as Exhibit A in their defence, but he dismissed the relevance of that, too. That may have something to do with his observation at the time that the scoreboard had ultimately been kind to them in Healy Park.
Three points was the margin last month.
“I think it has to be a two-sided affair,” he said of the final against the four-in-a-row chasing champions.
“We feel we underperformed and I am sure Dublin performed to a high level. So, I think a combination of those two things and that was unfortunate because nobody wants to come to a big match and know the result at half-time.
“That doesn’t please anybody - except the team in the position to win.
“It doesn’t please the rest of the country. So, we would like to think we can be part of a good All-Ireland final and if we do our very best I think we should be in touching distance of Dublin and that would be good.”
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