Galway reaping rewards from change of Harte

Aidan Harte celebrates his 30th birthday tomorrow, his late-blooming inter-county career continuing to thrive because of a decision made by two men preparing for a county final four years ago.

Harte’s time in the maroon shirt can be neatly packaged into two parts; everything that didn’t happen for him, as a forward and midfielder, up until the 2015 All-Ireland quarter-final against Cork and everything he made happen for himself in his new half-back role.

Come the 2015 championship, Anthony Cunningham and his backroom team had settled on the Gort man as one of their first-choice midfielders. He started all four of their Leinster Championship outings, but failed to show in the provincial decider against Kilkenny and was whipped off after 39 minutes.

Management gave him another chance in the clash with Cork, but the midfield experiment had been consigned to the dustbin. Eighteen-year-old Conor Whelan came into the half-forward line, David Burke moved out to midfield, with Harte taking ownership of the number five jersey at Fergal Moore’s expense. Harte seized the opportunity and, as Tony Considine would write in these pages on the eve of the 2015 All-Ireland final, “Aidan has finally found his best position having been moved all over the field by Cunningham and John McIntyre in recent years. Far more effective attacking down the wing, as opposed to coming from midfield.”

That All-Ireland, mind you, didn’t exactly go to plan. Harte was called ashore after 24 minutes, though it didn’t deter Micheál Donoghue from persisting with him in defence, as he started all of the 18 championship games Galway have played under Donoghue and finished 16.

With some positions, you can turn a good hurler into anything,” Kilkenny’s Jackie Tyrrell noted midway through the 2017 championship. “When Galway’s Aidan Harte started his career [in 2010], I was marking him. He was a corner-forward then, now he’s an excellent wing-back who is probably in line for an All-Star.

Those early years in the Galway camp saw Harte struggling to establish himself in attack. Between 2010 and 2014, he started only six championship games, but in the autumn of 2014 the seeds were planted which saw Cunningham a year later roll the dice with Harte in defence, rescuing his inter-county career.

He spent much of the 2014 county championship being moved between the half-back line and midfield, but in the decider against Portumna, Gort manager Gerry Spellman and his right-hand man on the line, six-time All-Ireland winning minor manager Mattie Murphy, were certain where to put him.

The half-back line is where we saw his future and where he was at his best, that is what I felt anyway,” said Spellman.

“There were various occasions, as you do with a county player, where we pushed him into a place where he could have the most influence on the team and on the game. If that was centre-forward or wing-forward, you do that with your county player, but we would have seen Aidan as a guy that when he is facing the ball, he could be very, very effective.”

Harte starred at right half-back during the county final win, limiting Joe Canning to two points from play.

Aidan, we felt, could see the whole pitch in front of him when facing the ball and had the athleticism, when he got on the ball, to influence the game from wing-back,” continued Spellman.

“He was super in that 2014 county final, got man of the match. He has a huge capacity for playing at his best on the big day.

“I am not surprised by how well he has done in that role with Galway. He has a great attitude to his own preparation, wanting always to be the best. There are a lot of players with a lot of talent who haven’t reached those heights or, maybe, reached the heights once and backed off, but Aidan hasn’t. He has always been there. He took a bit of criticism coming up along with Galway, but he’s always stuck at it. It is a huge credit to himself that he has made the most of himself.”

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