“[The last 48 hours have] been very busy on the phone. Every minute you set it down there’s another beep on the phone, but generally it was all good anyway. That was the nice thing about it. But I’m very happy with the decision that’s been made and it’s time to let somebody else have a go at the reins and I wish them all the very best. Whoever that is that takes over I hope they continue to keep Tyrone at the top table and as high up the table as possible.”
WHEN MICKEY HARTE reflected on the end of his lengthy tenure as Tyrone senior football manager on the BBC’s Ulster championship coverage on Sunday afternoon, he looked like a man content with his decision. The events of last week brought an end to Harte’s 30 unbroken years as manager of the county’s minor, U21 and senior teams.
It was a remarkably successful period in Tyrone’s history. The great team of the noughties changed the game forever, landing the Sam Maguire three times in 2003, ’05 and ’08. Even discounting all that and taking his reign from ’09 onwards, with four Ulster titles and an All-Ireland final appearance, he’d go down as the greatest Tyrone manager of all-time.
Two men who sent through text messages congratulating Harte on his career over the weekend were former Red Hand defenders Cathal McCarron and PJ Quinn, both members of the ’08 All-Ireland winning squad. Speaking to The42, they discuss Harte in glowing terms, offering insight into his greatness as a manager and a man.
First and foremost, McCarron was relieved to see the Harte era end without a fallout between him and the county board.
“I was hoping for that myself, that things would go smoothly and there wouldn’t be bitterness,” he says. “Thank God that’s the way it has went and it has been a smooth process. He deserves that for all he’s done with Tyrone but it could have went a bit better and it could have went the other way as well just as easily.
“So I’m delighted that it didn’t go that way, he can go to games and be held as one of the best managers in the game.
“I can see now that he seems to be happy. I don’t think he wanted to walk away but I kind of feel just even messaging him the other night, and from listening to him on TV, he actually seems to be in a better place. He seems to be happy with his decision, with nearly a wee bit of a weight lifted off his shoulders.”
He was tactically innovative, typified by his reinvention of several key players. He converted Sean Cavanagh and Cathal McShane into devastating full-forwards a decade apart, Joe McMahon to full-back for an All-Ireland final against Kerry’s twin towers and Cormac McAnallen to one of the game’s best full-backs before his untimely death.
McAnallen’s passing showcased how Harte handled the various tragedies that came his way with immense dignity and grace. Arthur Mallon, Paul McGirr, Kevin Hughes’s brother and sister, McAnallen, Harte’s daughter Michaela and, most recently, Jonny Curran were all heartbreaking losses to overcome.
“He’s been through his fair share of problems, personally himself and for other people as well. You could say he’s probably lived two or three lives because all he’s been through, manys a person wouldn’t have seen half the stuff he’s seen,” McCarron says.
“From where I was there in ’08 I didn’t see his passion drop one bit if anything it just got greater, and that was with tragedy in the middle of all that. I couldn’t speak highly enough of him as a manager and as a person. He’s first class.”
He selflessly travelled the length and breadth of the country for speaking arrangements over the years, offering words of hope to others dealing with unspeakable misfortunes and looking for nothing in return.
John Connellan recently tweeted that he “would never forget” Harte’s speech to the 2006 Westmeath minor panel after they lost team-mate Darren Price in a car accident just days after lining out with the side in the Leinster championship.
“Mickey was more than just a manager,” says Quinn.
“I can only personally speak for myself. There were different things I was going through…Mickey personally stood by me in different situations that I don’t need to disclose in the media. I know of other players that he helped in the background and went out of his way to help. Mickey was always there to defend his players first and foremost.”
McCarron’s crippling gambling addiction saw him sink to horrific depths, but through it all Harte never gave up on him. At the worst moments, he offered a beacon of hope, delivered without judgment.
There was the January afternoon in 2010 when McCarron was two months into his first stint in Cuan Mhuire treatment centre when Harte paid an unexpected visit.
He brought the player’s Celtic Cross from the 2008 victory – McCarron had missed the All-Ireland winners’ banquet as his life had started to spiral out of control. Midweek visitors were not permitted, but as McCarron wrote in his book “they weren’t going to turn Mickey Harte away.”
Recalling that day now, McCarron says: “I remember it very well. He just landed in, I wasn’t aware he was coming at all. It was kind of a surprise. We went into a room anyway. He landed with a medal and gave me a bit of a talk.”
Harte offered words of encouragement. He told McCarron the book wasn’t closed on his Tyrone career, not by a long shot.
“If you focus on life, and on living life well, just think of all the possibilities out there,” Harte said. “Look at the football you were playing, with all that hell in your life. Imagine, just imagine, what you really could do if you got all of this sorted out.”
“It was a great moment for me being a young fella,” says McCarron. “It was a wee driving point for me in my life at that stage. I was saying to myself that I wanted to get back to where I was and make a name for myself playing for Tyrone and have a good career. I’ll always be thankful for him doing that because he obviously didn’t have to do it but that’s the kind of man he is.
“I just heard Peter Canavan speak on Sunday about how he’s done an awful lot for people that nobody knows about and continues to do so. I would second that. I do know a lot of stuff he has done for people that people don’t know about. You really couldn’t say a bad word about the man because he’d go out of his way to help anybody.”
McCarron fell off the wagon again and endured an even more tumultuous period of his life. Living in London, such was the extent of his downfall he appeared in a gay pornographic movie in order to pay off gambling debts.
But after completing rehabilitation in Cuan Mhuire in Newry in 2014, the call came from Harte to rejoin the Tyrone panel. A year later he was an All-Star nominee.
“Again in 2014 when a lot of people mightn’t have given me the chance. That’s who he is and I suppose I owe him a lot for igniting my career.
“As a man, a person and manager I couldn’t speak highly enough of him. Even taking away the sentimental value, he’s very good at what he does. As a person as well, his faith and belief is powerful.”
That faith was never more important to Harte when he lost Michaela in tragic circumstances in January 2011. Almost ten years on from her murder while on honeymoon, McCarron and Quinn marvelled at Harte’s strength to soldier on in the darkest of days.
“I was there on the panel,” recalls McCarron. “I was in utter shock, complete and utter shock. I remember even the couple of weeks after that, before Michaela had even come home, we were up at the house. I think I was up there twice. We were just up with Mickey and that as players and it was a bit surreal. It was a real mad time. It was really hard to know what to say.
“All wakes and funerals are hard to talk to people that have lost loved ones but I think it was worse there given the circumstances that had happened him. I think he just buried himself in football. It wasn’t really mentioned to us when we went to training. We all knew but nobody really said much about it. It just continued on.
“Obviously if Mickey needed time or anything we were there to support him. But I think the energy he got from being at training kept him going and that’s what drove him forward. He learned to deal with it because he had the football. I do believe if he didn’t have the football it would have been a lot harder for him.”
Quinn remembers the days and weeks that followed as “very, very tough.”
“I can’t believe the character of the man that he was fit to come through it,” he says. “It was an awful tragedy. It hit the team, the community and more importantly forgetting everything else, it hit Mickey and his family. I remember us playing Donegal in the first game Mickey came back, we played up in Edendork.
“We were getting ready for the game when Mickey came in and everybody just gave him a round of applause. It just really showed there’s so much more important things than football. It’s not about medals and trophies, it’s about memories and Mickey has given the GAA some amount of memories.
“The GAA was very good to Mickey at that time too and stood by him. He said it openly in interviews as well that only for it, it gave him the strength to help him get through. It was a tough time. I know a lot of those Tyrone players had been through tragedies before.
“Unfortunately it was at his own door this time. Nobody can speak highly enough about the man. People sympathised with Mickey over the tragedy of Michaela but at the same time they quickly forget about that and relate it back to football, but sometimes you just have to look a little bit deeper than football every now and again.”
If all that wasn’t enough, Harte had a serious illness of his own to deal with. He was diagnosed with bladder cancer in early 2015 and received ongoing treatment up until December ’17 when he got the all-clear.
A surgical procedure to remove cancerous cells in his bladder caused him to miss his only Tyrone game in 30 years, a league tie against Kerry where a draw wasn’t enough to spare the Red Hand from relegation to Division 2. Harte’s diagnosis and 30-month treatment never made its way into the public domain until he spoke about it before the 2018 All-Ireland final.
“We knew about it,” reveals McCarron. “He missed a game because of it [surgery], the only game he’s missed in 30 years. It was weird because he wasn’t with us on the bus that day. We all knew about it. We also knew that he got good news when he got the all-clear as well. He’s a real good one to keep going.”
Despite all the tough days there were plenty of great ones too. His teams played with a hunger and spirit that made them very difficult to play against. He continually kept things fresh by mixing up his backroom team.
He had the man management skills to handle a maverick like Owen Mulligan, to recall Stephen O’Neill before the ’08 All-Ireland final and to plant a seed into the back of Conor McKenna’s mind by inviting him to train with the seniors shortly before he departed to Australia to pursue an AFL career.
Within weeks of his return, McKenna rejoined the Tyrone panel and quickly became their main man in the absence of McShane.
“I remember training that night well when Conor McKenna came up. I ran over and welcomed him into the team and a few weeks late he was away again,” recalls Quinn.
While some outside the camp speculated that Harte kept his distance from players, it’s clear that he was able to continually relate with the younger generations with each passing year.
“I saw Richie Donnelly had a photograph up away on a team holiday of Mickey Harte on the back of a scooter with him!” laughs Quinn. “Them things are priceless.
“It shows the character of Mickey Harte, the way the thing has transformed and players are of a different generation now. They’re all wearing tight jeans and no socks. Rave music beating through the changing rooms.
“I found that weird when I came back from injury one time and Darren McCurry and them boys had the speaker pumped up full blast. I said, ‘Jesus Mickey’s gone wile soft in his old age.’ He reinvented himself along with the new generations and he has to be given great credit for that.”
McCarron agrees. “In his early days he was more prone to just wanting to do his ways and ideas, whereas as the years went on he opened up to changing this. I suppose you have to change with the times.
“The likes of [Brian] Dooher and them boys when I came through as a young fella, like I hardly spoke to them lads. Nearly sitting with fear and looking up in aye in the changing room. Whereas you have young lads coming in now and they’d be nearly slagging you off.
“Just different generations, with a bit of cockiness and arrogance. But you have to move with the times. Music in the changing room and all this, he’s seen an awful lot from ’03 till now. If he didn’t move with the times he probably would have been gone a while ago, but he did and he changed things up. He brought Gavin Devlin and all into his backroom team.”
Both men warn that those who hoped for Harte’s departure should be careful of what they wish for. They point out how he kept Tyrone competing at the top table when he didn’t have the same quality of player available to him as he did in the noughties.
“Maybe we were punching a wee bit above our weight certain years and I believe it was down to him as manager bringing us to that level,” says McCarron.
“It’s a hard one to call. A new fresh face and voice could change things up but the record he set and expectations for the county, if you weren’t winning an All-Ireland – even if you won an Ulster title – it was probably seen as a failed year.”
And it may not be long before he finds himself on the sideline in some capacity again.
“I can see him going into a management job really soon. That’s just the way he is. I can’t see him sitting still. Whether it be a club management job, I can’t see him taking another county – I just can’t see him doing it.
“But I can see him taking a club or being involved in a club in some way. But no the man will not sit down and just stay still. He’s just that type. He loves his football so he’ll be on the sideline somewhere pretty soon I’d say.”
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