THINK OF THE MOST influential people in the Tyrone rise to prominence of the ‘90s, through to the county that claimed three All-Irelands the following decade.
Now rank them in order of importance and impact.
Mickey Harte is at the top. Peter Canavan up there. Brian Dooher as a three-time winning player, two-time winning captain, one-time winning joint manager. Unquestionably.
Stephen O’Neill. Sean Cavanagh. Owen Mulligan. Cormac McAnallen. Brian McGuigan. Big Hub. Ricey.
How far would you have Gavin ‘Horse’ Devlin up the list? Top twenty? Top ten, at a push?
Consider where Harte found himself at the end of the 1997 season. He had by then spent several years as the Tyrone minor manager. He had only just won their first Ulster title but he and the squad were left bereft after the tragic death of Paul McGirr. They lost the All-Ireland final to Laois.
He was for giving it all up, but once he was convinced otherwise it was into the nitty-gritty of assembling a panel for the 1998 season.
Such is the belief of Tyrone football people, clubs send a huge number of players. Harte would have to make snap judgements on dozens, whittling around 250 players down to a panel a tenth of the size.
You’ll look for anything at all to mark a tick beside a young fella’s name. As soon as he came across a red-faced Gavin Devlin of Ardboe, he settled his mind instantly.
“He was on one of these teams and he was playing wing half back, and this lad was talking and directing operations and telling people where to go!” recalls Harte.
“He had never seen them before. But he knew that they needed to be doing things that he could see.
“And he knew his limitations, he hadn’t a big kick of the ball but of course he was very fortunate he had Brian McGuigan not far from him all the time.
“So he always said, ‘Give the ball to McGuigan. Give the ball to McGuigan.’
“All he wanted when he got the ball, was to spot McGuigan so he could give him a foot pass of 30 or 35 yards or a hand pass and he was very good at that. He knew the people that needed to get the ball to make things happen.”
From there, Harte and Devlin have been on some trip. 27 years and counting, with a pause of just five years as Devlin transitioned from player to county-ready trainer.
In his first year, Harte was faced with a test of faith.
In the league final, Devlin had an incident with Laois player Colm Parkinson. He was sent off and then suspended for twelve weeks.
Tyrone tried an appeal before they faced Derry in the championship. On their way to the replay in Casement Park, word came through that a second appeal had failed.
After they beat Derry, Harte took Devlin to a quiet corner of the changing rooms and had it worked out. He would be back for the All-Ireland semi-final. So be ready.
As it happened, that game came against Kerry. Devlin dropped back and manned the top of the ‘D’, cutting out the diagonal passes towards Colm Cooper and Mike Frank Russell. By year’s end, it was another All-Ireland for Harte, with Devlin on his side.
“We had built a lot of trust in each other and like I knew his qualities. I knew his value to the team. I didn’t think twice about it. As soon as his suspension was over, he fitted the bill.”
By the end of 2007 he retired. Still a young man, but recognising he was being left behind by a breed of man that actually enjoyed the gymnasium.
Opposing teams would place a runner on him. Instead of lying back and gobbling all the passes, he was haring after a busy worker bee, dragged everywhere.
Immediately, he was coaching Newbridge in Derry. Then Bellaghy. After a few years, the whispers of his training ground ability were humming.
Harte called him back to Base Camp for 2013.
“He is a coach like I never seen anybody as good as him, that’s the truth,” says Harte.
“People think because he played defender himself that he is kind of the defence man, all about defence. Absolutely not.
“He is a very creative coach. Anybody who knows him would know that he has a passion for Gaelic Games and he delivers that and he demands high standards of the players.
“He is a great innovator in terms of setting up situations in training and in the training arena that translate to the game. It’s not just about training certain drills to do the skills, if they haven’t got relevance to the game they are not going to be as beneficial as they would be otherwise.
“He has that innate ability to transfer skill arrangements on the training field that will be used on the game day. He reminds me of these top-class snooker players, not looking at the immediate, looking at three shots down the line.”
When they were joining up together as the Tyrone management, it’s inconceivable that they might have thought that three shots down the line was a shot at the Derry job, via a stint and two promotions with Louth.
But here they are. National League champions. Unlike almost every new coaching job, they were inheriting a team ready, on an upward graph after the years put in by former manager Rory Gallagher.
The Tyrone-Derry rivalry has some purchase, but it’s overstated when it comes to Harte. They were rarely in the same orbit lately and Harte’s local rivalries were on the other side of the county, closer to Armagh, Monaghan and Fermanagh.
Different for Devlin though. The hinterlands of Ardboe and Ballinderry and Moortown all mesh into each other and, with his sons Conan and Cormac breaking through the Tyrone underage ranks, there is a significant chance he could, some day soon, manage a Derry team against them.
When Harte asked Devlin if he would come along with him for a tilt at glory with Derry, he admits there was every chance he might have said no.
But…
“He has just been very loyal to me over time. Over the years he has been very loyal and I have always said he is as good as another son to me,” Harte adds.
