Mickey Harte

Moaners should take a hop; Harte should take a bow

IT MUST be strange being Mickey Harte. Must be disorienting. You've just moved from wise-guys joking about how well you do to fit in football between song contests, to facing a future of strangers jabbing at you with
crucifixes. In one day, you've turned from a dreamer into something scaly with a forked tail.

People are pointing. Phone-ins are steaming. Your life has changed utterly in 80 garbled minutes. You've ruined football, you see. You've taken niceplayers and re-invented them as people who would body-check their own mothers. Face it Mickey. You've turned Tyrone from a temptress into a jezebel.

If football was meant to be played like this, we'd reduce pitches to the size of tennis courts. We could give players those gridiron shoulder pads. And helmets too. We could get the goalkeepers to go sell popcorn (they're not really needed in this new game). We could make a ball optional. Likewise a referee. And, for safety reasons, we could sell welders' goggles to the punters. Mickey, Mickey, Mickey . . . how could you?

One television pundit apparently christened it "puke football" on Sundayevening. And, no doubt, Kerry people everywhere howled agreement. But it's a funny thing that. The only patently violent acts of the entire game were the punches thrown by a Kerry back at Stephen O'Neill just after the resumption and by a Kerry fan at Páidí Ó Sé right at the death. Tyrone didn't beat up anyone. They just squeezed the game so tight that Kerry had no room to play and, ultimately, no appetite. I read over the weekend where Harte said that he didn't "like playing for fun". And that was writ large across his team. They were solemn and, occasionally, unscrupulous. And they didn't give a curse for anyone thinking this should be opera.

Mickey Harte clearly knows how history judges people. He knows the team of '86 was nicer on the eye. He knows that McKenna could have imparted elegance to a mud-wrestle; that O'Hagan's dash was truly thrilling; that McGarvey, Lynch, McCabe and Donaghy all had the aura of authentic stars. He certainly knows the team of '95 should have nailed this thing long before him. When 17 players contribute a grand total of 0-1 between them in an All-Ireland final (the same margin that you lose by), you know you've just been scandalously remiss with your shot at history. People will always be fond of that version of Tyrone, of course. They'll also be ever so slightly patronising.

So what exactly has Harte done? Well, he's tapped into the fashion of the time. He's acknowledged you can't beat Kerry by trying to run prettier patterns. Because that's like picking a duel with Wyatt Earp. So you tie them up with physicality. You bully them. You let them know that you don't give a damn if they have to take you out of this place in assorted bags when it's all over. Because you're just kind of obsessed. Actually, possessed if you like. And, frankly, your opponents already have 32 of the things that you want just one of.

It worked for Armagh last autumn. Hey, it's going to work for someone this September too. Because Tyrone, Armagh and Donegal are all disciples of the compression theory. In simplistic terms, you could say they like to play with 13 backs and two attackers. It's not the end of football as we know it. It just needs a smart mind to
find a counter. And trust me, someone will. In the meantime, maybe we should desist from demonising pragmatic men. No, this game is not good to watch. Yes, it leans heavily on the cynical. But does that make it unique to Gaelic football? If you think it does, you obviously haven't seen too much of the game this last 30 years. The way some are hollering, you'd think the GAA faces a monumental crisis here. It doesn't. If bad karma hasn't killed football up to now, it'll hardly do so in the future. Personally, I'd prefer to see Tyrone grind opposition down than watch Jordan engines blow, Liverpool teams draw nil-all or bloated sprinters spit out
their dummies on a starting block.

I'd prefer to see Peter Canavan lift the Sam Maguire than I would see a Russian billionaire buy the Premiership title. Because people like Canavan and Harte are giving every ounce of themselves to winning this damn thing for their people. And that's the extent of their obsession. Getting Tyrone home. If it happens, Canavan will still keep his day job in a Cookstown classroom. He'll still have a mortgage to pay. He'll still be as accessible as any man
in the street.

And Harte? He'll probably wonder if Kerry folk can even imagine what it feels like to be from Tyrone just now. The dynamic at play? The sense of trust and love between impossibly hungry men? Chances are they won't, but that's not his problem. He ought to take a bow. And a pinch of salt for the doomsayers.

Written by: Vhogan1@hotmail.com