Declan Bogue

DEPENDING ON WHERE you live in the country, there’s always a few videos that get heavy rotation on your social media and WhatsApp groups.

One that does good numbers round this way is a clip of two young lads from Tyrone ‘taking the hand’ out of an animated gentleman through the car window, apparently at Draperstown livestock mart, not far from a bare Tyrone-Derry interface in the Sperrin mountains.

The conversation appears well underway when filming started and one of the boys suggests that Derry will never have a player as good as Peter Canavan.

“Youse’ll never have a man like Toke-hill”, comes the sharp retort, followed by, “Or big ginger!” completing the tribute to the midfield pairing of Anthony Tohill and Brian McGilligan that captured the 1993 All-Ireland.

There follows some fruity enough language. Earthy stuff. This is a mart after all, not a Belgravia reading room.

Our main protagonist grows ever more animated, works himself into a froth as he shouts, “An’ that oul’ Mickey Harte! Stuck in the papers! He’ll be the death of us. NOW… DON’T… SHOOT YOUR ****ING NECK AT ME!!”

Well, now. Penny for that man’s thoughts on this fine day?

On Tuesday evening at Owenbeg, those who make the decisions in Derry GAA spoke on the appointment of Harte. Everyone from the clubs were in favour. All the executive members were in favour.

At the tail end of 2019 when they appointed Rory Gallagher, there was rancour in the room. Essentially, some figures outside the county didn’t want Gallagher and managed to stir up some low-grade opposition, dressed up as concern for the fig-leaf of ‘procedures.’ It still got through.

There was nothing of that kind here.

Mickey Harte signing autographs for Louth supporters. Laszlo Geczo / INPHO Laszlo Geczo / INPHO / INPHO

As a measure of how fast this all happened, there hadn’t been contact between Harte and Derry just a week ago. A meeting had then been arranged, proposals outlined, a suitable period of reflection and ultimately, ‘The Decision’ for Harte and Gavin Devlin to take their talents to Owenbeg and Celtic Park.

Derry will feel they were helped by Louth’s statement putting things out into the open. Otherwise, club chairs would have had to be contacted throughout Tuesday to inform them of the one candidate up for ratification.

Instead, the news broke on Monday, allowing delegates to get their heads around it. Phonecalls of support were put through to executive members. Ultimately, they would all generally land on the same point – there was no better candidate from who was available after enquiries.  

In recent weeks Harte had been engaged in significant fundraising efforts for Louth. Players had been given targets to reach in their own fitness. It had been full steam for 2024.

They were called to the meeting on Monday thinking it was another routine meeting and instead left with their heads spinning.

The manner of their leaving recalls that sparklingly clear lyric of John Hiatt’s ‘Crossing Muddy Waters’;

‘Baby’s gone and I don’t know why

‘She headed out this morning

‘Like a rusty shot in a hollow sky

‘She left me without warning.’

All that shock will melt away. What is left is Mickey Harte in his third coming, this time as Derry manager.

It’s being talked about as somehow an unpalatable thing, a dilution of the strict caste system of Derry football.

Do they forget Ardboe man Brian McIver’s spell in charge of the senior team, when Derry beat Dublin in the 2014 National League?

Were they unaware that when they won the Ulster U20 provincial title, that team was managed by Mickey Donnelly of Tyrone?

Of all counties, Tyrone have been throwing their coaches around the province and beyond like snuff at a wake. It’s a surprise surely, but it’s a surprise because it’s Harte.  

When it dies down, it will be seen as a brilliant and tidy bit of business. When the county representatives were dealing with Harte, there was no talk whatsoever of approaching other coaches or medical staff to form a backroom team. To do so would have widened the circle of trust.

Derry can’t afford to hang around and cultivate a manager. It has to be one capable of delivering an All-Ireland.

Harte was in a final as recently as 2018. His team – the team he built and the one where he managed to get Conor McKenna home from Australia while also making the necessary arrangements to keep Cathal McShane going in the opposite direction – went on to win an All-Ireland in 2021 after some necessary tweaks.

There’s a very small pool of managers who know what the top end is about. Harte is one. Derry exhausted the list of those with that particular experience.

With Gavin Devlin’s experience in coaching Slaughtneil, there will be a couple of fresh pairs of eyeballs being thrown over the playing pool.

Under Rory Gallagher, the Derry panel was kept small. Even within that tight unit, around a third of the panel knew that they weren’t trusted to play more than a handful of minutes on rare occasions.

That’s fine for a year. Two, tops. But a lack of motivation inevitably drags down the collective effort. A new management instead blows enthusiasm into it like a bellows.

There’s a bit of ‘how could he?’ talk out there in the social media vortex, owing to the supposedly fierce and bitter rivalry between the two.

This really is open to dispute, but we have to take it from two perspectives. Firstly, the on-field record. Apart from a few years in the mid-90s, was this really the case?

In Harte’s 18 seasons managing Tyrone, they met Derry in championship eight times. They were Harte’s first championship opponents in 2003 and drew in Clones, before a nine-point win in the replay in Casement Park.

Mickey Harte up against Derry's Mickey Moran in his first championship game in 2003. INPHO INPHO

Tyrone won six of those games, Derry won just one in 2006. The average winning margin was just under eight points.

As a player for Tyrone, Donegal were a far greater going concern for Harte. Once he became manager, Armagh were the team that Tyrone measured themselves against, later becoming Donegal in the Jim McGuinness era.

Now, that is concentrating purely on the Tyrone senior football team. Not the supporter base.

Geography plays a role here.

Tyrone is similar to Kerry in some ways in that there are a few competing footballing cultures. West of the county is less populated with a very different feel.

East Tyrone is a hot bed of industry, engineering works and plants everywhere. The population is greater and more packed in. The Loughshore area teems with clubs all spilling and tipping into each other such as Moortown, Ardboe, Stewartstown, Brackaville, Derrytresk, Brocach, Derrylaughan and around another half a dozen that it wouldn’t be a stretch to mention.

That runs into the heartland of Derry football. It’s an odd coincidence, but of the recent county squads, the vast bulk with exceptions such as Gareth McKinless (Ballinderry) and Ben McCarron (Steelstown in Derry city), they have been from around Maghera (Glen) and the surrounding clubs; Lavey, Slaughtneil, Newbridge, Bellaghy and Greenlough.

Up then northwards along the Tyrone county interface to Cookstown, Greencastle and Clann Na nGael, where it runs into Derry clubs Glenullin, Craigbane and Banagher.

To the east of Derry lies Antrim. As a fanbase, they don’t see Antrim as a threat whatsoever. They wouldn’t be crazy about Donegal either. However, (and we’re generalising here, but it’s fun) like our friend at Draperstown Mart, they can’t abide Tyrone.

Down there in Ballygawley, closer to Monaghan, Fermanagh and Donegal, Harte is a step removed from all that. But it explains why for present Tyrone managers Feargal Logan (Stewartstown) and Brian Dooher (Clann Na nGael), Derry will always be their derby. They lived through the mid-90s wars, after all.

Back to the present day.

In Ulster, Harte will only have Meath’s Andy McEntee (Antrim) for company as an ‘outside’ manager in 2024.

However, there’s an elasticity to these definitions nowadays. Look at Derry’s backroom last year. Ciaran Meenagh and Peter Hughes were both from Tyrone and goalkeeping coach Ronan Gallagher is from Fermanagh originally, now living in Armagh.

Fermanagh may have a home-grown manager in Kieran Donnelly, but he is supported by Fergal Quinn and Ronan O’Neill, both of Tyrone.

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There’s something a bit odd when you see how Tyrone coaches have been crossing county boundaries for the past decade but it’s nothing new.

Peter Canavan is revered as a God in Tyrone, but he has managed Fermanagh as his only county experience.

Stephen O’Neill will be on the Cavan sidelines next year, as Ryan McMenamin was this year. Enda McGinley and O’Neill moved from a role managing Swatragh in Derry, to taking the Antrim footballers.

As we know, Paddy Tally had been inside the Kerry camp when they won the All Ireland in 2022, and had considerable less input this year when they lost the final. Mattie McGleenan spent two seasons managing Cavan.

We could go on and on. But Harte cannot be criticised for managing outside the county when it is so commonplace.

Tyrone football was, and always will be, bigger than one man. When Harte’s time was up with Tyrone after 30 years’ service, then he stepped down and exited with the greatest of class and poise. He spoke of his joy of being asked to do the job and what he called his ‘privilege’ to be able to do it.

Harte with Derry manager Damian Cassidy, 2009. Cathal Noonan / INPHO Cathal Noonan / INPHO / INPHO

All the same, he would have loved to have continued. That was his preferred option. He had that taken away from him in a way when people acted shamefully.

He deserved better than to be sitting outside Garvaghey on a November night in his car alongside Mattie Donnelly, watching a trail of people get into their cars, turn on their headlights and drive on past him without a word after they had deliberated on his future.

He knew by the silence of those heading home that it was over.

He’s a football manager, and he wants to manage at the top level. And people then think they can question his loyalty?

No. You don’t get to have it all your own way.