Mickey Harte ahead of date with Dubs: 'Maybe I am an eternal optimist'

By Brendan O'Brien

Mickey Harte insists there are no scars left to pick from last year's All-Ireland semi-final when a Tyrone side carrying momentum and a degree of expectation was dissected and dispatched with a frightening efficiency by Dublin in Croke Park.

The sides meet again at HQ in Sunday's decider with the Ulster county seeking a first title in ten years and Dublin aiming for four-in-a-row.

The Tyrone manager is insistent that events of 12 months ago will not cloud his thoughts - or those of his players - on their return to the capital.

"No, no I don’t expect so,” he said. “The scars would linger - if you felt that you couldn’t raise your head again to that level or that standard, but I think we have done that."

He isn't blind to the challenge ahead.

Harte has been fulsome in his praise of Jim Gavin's side and he has repeatedly qualified the worth of last month's confidence-boosting three-point loss to the champions in the Super 8s with the warning that the scoreboard was kind to the home team in Omagh.

It would have taken very little for Dublin to go on and slam us again the way they did before. They were only a kick of the ball away from doing that. Maybe we grabbed the game at the perfect time that we could make it a fight to the end.

His ability to digest victory and defeat in much the same manner has never changed.

The ink was hardly dry on their 12-point loss last August when he began writing an addendum to the conversation in the form of their Ulster title success and continued presence in Division One.

If another All-Ireland title felt further away than ever in the figurative sense last August, then it was a more literal sense of distance the county must have felt in 2014 when an Armagh side that had spent its spring in Division Three swept them aside in an All-Ireland qualifier in Healy Park.

Harte admits his belief bent at times, but it never broke.

Maybe I am an eternal optimist. I always believed that these things were possible. Certain results hit you sorely and you think, 'are we ever going to get back to the top table?'

Being written off, as they have been so many times despite reaching quarter-finals and semi-finals more often than not since 2008, doesn't stoke any fires in him. Tyrone, he would remind you, were underdogs in '03, '05 and '08 and beat the defending champions every time."You do ask yourselves those questions but I have a

serious belief in the quality of the players that exist in our county and in the systems that prevail and the support that we have at every level.

“There is something about being patient and trusting in what you are about and adjusting what needs to be adjusted to try and come up with something better and different.

"It is an ongoing process and you learn a lot from setbacks and hurt. Maybe it is good to feel the hurt of defeat and by slipping a bit it drives you on to try and maybe think outside the box.”

Being written off, as they have been so many times despite reaching quarter-finals and semi-finals more often than not since 2008, doesn't stoke any fires in him. Tyrone, he would remind you, were underdogs in '03, '05 and '08 and beat the defending champions every time.

What may have burned more was the decision by the Tyrone top brass to refuse his request for a one-year extension to his term back in 2016: this on the back of a season which delivered an Ulster title, promotion from Division Two and a one-point All-Ireland quarter-final loss to Mayo.

It was merely the most significant expression of the widespread doubts that have been expressed about a man who has been delivering silverware to the county across the minor, U21 and senior grades since 1991.

He looks back on that episode with a degree of mirth now.

“I understand that some people always crave change if you’re not winning,” he explained. “I’ve seen it and heard it.

"Someone at a meeting decried that it was seven or eight years since Tyrone had reached an All-Ireland final and this was a real problem for them.

I began to wonder what we were doing for the 119 years before we won any!

"But there are people with that mentality. That’s fine, they can be as they may, but there are a lot of good people in our county who love Gaelic games and the whole concept of what it has to offer, to themselves and to their family.

“I understand that there’s always an urge to change: the view that ‘new’ will always bring ‘better’.

"But I still felt over the years that there was still something we could offer as a management and that I could offer as a person to Gaelic games at this level. I still believed I could do that and I’m glad that people on the county board who mattered agreed with that assessment.”