AFTER CORK WERE taken care of and Jack O’Connor got the response he felt Kerry needed following the defeat to Mayo, the questions coming from reporters switched from looking back to gazing into the future.
Two weeks away, O’Connor was invited to share his thoughts about upcoming opponents: facing Louth, but more specifically, Mickey Harte.
A bristly smile and a wan look into the mid-distance as he did a quick calculation.
“Yerra no. Myself and Mickey aren’t playing at all, it’s the boys who are playing. Jaysus, he’s a long time on the road, isn’t he? Like myself, I suppose. Fair dues to him, he’s a mighty man.”
When Harte and O’Connor take opposite dugouts in Portlaoise on Sunday, it will be 21 seasons since Harte first managed at this level.
After a sluggish start to the league, a win over Kerry in Killarney confirmed that they were making progress. He studied a tape of their previous game and noticed that Seamus Moynihan was exploding forward from centre back.
A Dublin defender would try to halt his run, therefore leaving space for the forwards inside. Instead, Tyrone choked up the whole region with players. Simple logic, and what he will look to implement this Sunday against the reigning All-Ireland champions.
On Planet Punditry, Oisín McConville has said that Harte and Louth “will make it horrible”.
Peter Canavan? “I think the Louth camp will be a good place to be. He will have them hopping. Him and Horse [Gavin] Devlin, it is a great position for them to be in.”
All that energy, still after two decades at this gig.
Can it really be 20 years? It is. Twenty years since Harte came along and gave Kerry a taste of what it was like to be put on the floor, repeatedly, remorselessly and not a hint of an apology.
For Tyrone to beat Kerry in the league was one thing. To do it in Croke Park was, well, catastrophic in their eyes and soon led to the removal of Páidí Ó Sé from his managerial post.
After that grisly act, the Kerry county board went looking for O’Connor. It was some departure: from the flamboyant extrovert of Páidí, to someone who – despite all his years already in the system at underage and as senior selector – was cast as an outsider.
The feeling of otherness was only heightened earlier that year when he managed the U21 team that was beaten in the Munster final by Waterford.
Chiefly though, the reason for that was the break in The Golden Years succession plan. He had a lot to prove, but in that regard, the similarities with Harte were only getting going.
O’Connor thought he was an outsider? Consider that Harte spent seven years out of ‘official’ GAA, trying to get the Tyrone county board to recognise Glencull as a GAA club after the split in the old Ballygawley club.
Prior to the 2004 All-Ireland final, O’Connor’s wariness of the crowd stood out as he explained.
“The punters are hard to satisfy. There were suggestions this year that we have been introducing an alien style, that we are ‘getting men behind the ball’. I’ve never used the phrase ‘men behind the ball’ to a team in my life.
“We’re trying to get them to work harder as a team when we don’t have the ball. I don’t care what you call it. Call it the ‘Northern style’ if you want. It’s always been the philosophy I’ve had on football.”
O’Connor won Sam that year, at the same time as Tyrone were mourning the loss of their captain, Cormac McAnallen.
Harte then came and oversaw a pure football contest in the 2005 All-Ireland final against Kerry. Yes, tactically their ploys may have come off, but this time there was no room for puke football accusations to enter the conversation.
Never great at defending their titles, Tyrone fell badly in 2006 and Kerry were back as champions. O’Connor signed off after this, saying he couldn’t wait about for Tyrone to turn up for the big days.
Following a couple of years out, O’Connor returned in 2009.
In the meantime, his autobiography Keys To The Kingdom had been published. One of the most memorable lines is worth recounting here: “Losing to Tyrone is worse than losing to almost anyone else. They’re flash and nouveau riche and full of it.”
When Harte was pushed for a response to that line, he was remarkably gracious and thoughtful.
“Maybe people in the media were elevating us to a height we didn’t deserve to be at, but it was all relative,” reflected Harte.
“Relative to what Kerry had achieved, this wasn’t anything wonderful. It was wonderful for a team who had never done it before of course, and if he [Jack O’Connor] felt we were getting too much air space for once-off event, then he was entitled to think that.”
O’Connor’s resumption of hostilities came with the 2009 league game in Omagh.
Ryan McMenamin grabbed Paul Galvin’s groin area as they disputed a line ball. Things got badly out of hand. McMenamin roared in O’Connor’s face. Jack reacted. The rivalry was up and running again.
Only, it never got back to the way things were. Harte’s team began a gradual decline after the 2008 All-Ireland win.
By the time they fetched up in Killarney for a Round 3 qualifier game in 2012, they were a pale imitation of themselves. Kerry inflicted the heaviest defeat up to then in Harte’s time in charge, 1-16 to 1-6. It was the largest crowd also to attend a qualifier game outside of Croke Park with 24,370 packed into Fitzgerald Stadium.
Afterwards, as the Tyrone players and management made their way to the team bus, the Kerry support clapped and cheered Harte, offering their support for the immense horror he suffered the previous year when his daughter Michaela was murdered on honeymoon.
Astonishingly, that was the last time they met each other competitively, before now.
For a few years, the two figures dominated football. Mirror images of each other. Both were stubborn. Both men would apply the kinder description of being principled and strong-willed.
In January 2007, they both headed off on the All-Stars Tour with the teams of 2005 and 2006. When Harte won the 2008 All-Ireland, he became the oldest winning manager at 56. Last year, O’Connor took that honour at the age of 61.
Harte won his first All-Ireland with a 29-year-old team trainer, Paddy Tally.
When O’Connor came back for Kerry, he brought Tally in with him to train the team.
“Paddy would give us that outside perspective and sometimes you need that to tell you where your failings are, you know. I’ve always been open to bringing people in. My first year involved with Kerry I brought in a Waterford man who was living in Kerry called Pat Flanagan to do the S&C,” he explained about the coup.
“I’ve never been slow in embracing outside people, anyone who can give you a different perspective.
“And it just so happened Paddy was taking a sabbatical from his job in St Mary’s and he was available. I think Paddy has enjoyed himself down here and has really contributed.”
As much as O’Connor mirrored Harte, perhaps even lifted a great deal out of his playbook, the two counties were worlds apart before Harte became Tyrone manager.
The greatest example of that attitude was back in 1981 when Kerry were engaged in an epic journey around Ireland that was part Harlem Globetrotters, part fundraiser, and full-time party central as they gathered up the shekels for a round the world trip to celebrate four consecutive All-Irelands.
They came to play Tyrone in Carrickmore on 28 March. Mickey Harte was playing and scored 0-2. But the locals weren’t there for Harte or anyone in white. Instead, they wanted to see the Supermen of Kerry drubbing the locals, badgering Bomber Liston to lead the sing-song in The Patrician Hall afterwards.
“We thought they were wondermen coming to Tyrone. Stuff that was all in the distance, and here they were coming up to play challenge matches in Ulster,” recounted Harte in 2021.
“It was just amazing I suppose, to have the All-Ireland champions. Everybody thought this was magical, to see these boys who were the real deal, on the fields of Tyrone. It was an amazing event.
“We just weren’t in that league. You didn’t even dream about being in that league. They were ‘up there’ and we were where we were.”
The local paper, The Ulster Herald, breathlessly noted: “The general verdict just had to be that the mighty Kingdom are in a class of their own and their standing as superstars was further consolidated among the Tyrone supporters.”
Harte remarked, “It is hard, looking back on it to imagine that they carried that sense of awe and wonder to them. And our county were as much in awe and wonder as anyone,” before delivering the sentiment that he did more than anyone to achieve: “Thankfully, those days are gone!”
Harte’s target was to make Kerry seem human in the eyes of Tyrone.
Now he goes again, this time with Louth.
