Tyrone legend sets sight on promotion and promises 'winning football'

NEW Offaly senior football joint manager, Mickey Harte had some very simplistic, effective, almost one sentence answers when the questions a lot of supporters have on their minds were put to him on Sunday.

The Tyrone folk hero has one of the great managerial records of modern times and his appointment as joint Offaly senior football manager alongside the incumbent Declan Kelly came as a bolt from the blue last week.

The nature of Offaly's defeats to London and Limerick in the Tailteann Cup is a very big part of the reason that Mickey Harte is now in Offaly. Those two losses were quite horrific and meant that a debate about the future of Declan Kelly was inevitable.

With no appetite for pulling the axe at official level, the obvious solution was to strengthen up the managerial package but no one envisaged a man with the profile of Harte coming in and the expectation was that a new coach and perhaps other personnel would be added to Kelly's backroom team.

Instead the County Board have gone down a different road, appointing joint managers. Offaly have a long time tradition of appointing outside managers but it is the first time they have got a man with All-Ireland titles on his CV – Harte led his native Tyrone to three of those, as well as six Ulster championships and 1 National Football League. He led Derry to the National Football League this year and his departure as their manager left him available and still hungry for inter-county action.

He made his first visit to Offaly as the new joint manager last Sunday, firstly meeting members of the local media in O'Connor Park, Tullamore before travelling to Daingean to take in the Senior Football Championship clash between Tullamore and Rhode.

He was flanked by his co manager, Declan Kelly and Offaly GAA chairman Michael Duignan for what was a serious but light hearted questions and answers session, lasting almost half an hour.

A master at dealing with the media, Harte did not shirk from any question, giving very straightforward answers.

He certainly answered very well when asked about Offaly's Tailteann Cup malfunction this year. It was pointed out that while 2024 was particularly horrific, it was merely following in a long Offaly tradition of showing scant regard and sometimes reckless disinterest in second chance saloons or subsidiary competitions. Asked how he was going to change this fundamental failing among players, he glanced at Michael Duignan and suggested that the best option is to avoid having to play in the Tailteann Cup:

“Would it not be right, if you top Division Three, you might be playing in the All-Ireland series? That’s the first place I’d look.”

There was a humorous exchange when he was asked to confirm that he was in Offaly for a three year term. The Offaly GAA press release announcing his appointment last week stated that Harte and Kelly will serve for a three year term but such agreements are regularly ended by either the manager or the County Board. It has happened in Offaly while Harte himself was the Louth manager in 2023, went to Derry and that proved to be a one year term.

When the question was asked was it a three year term, Michael Duignan smiled as he asked had we not read the press release while Harte also grinned as he confirmed: “It is”.

There was a similarly simple answer when the meeting concluded with a question about the style of football Offaly might play. The fear among some supporters is that it will be very defensive but the Tyrone legend was not going to give away any state secrets or make any big promises. “Winning football” was his response when asked before noting that some rule changes may be introduced by the Football Review Committee and they will have to adapt to them.

At the outset, he stated that his involvement in Offaly originated through a mutual friend of his and Michael Duignan.

“We spoke about the possibility of something happening down here. I was at a loose end, so to speak, and we just had conversations that moved on. We spoke to Declan and we agreed that we’d give it a go together.”

The National Football League will be a huge priority for Harte and Offaly in 2025.

“You’re looking at the level that the team plays at right at the minute, and you figure out can they be better than that? And I think we know from looking at them that they could. Even results last year, it was tight going and there were a few results that were very close. They could have been at the top end of the table just as easily. The league is a great measure of the potential of a team, and being in Division Three, it was the same question I asked myself when I went to Louth in Division Four, I knew from watching football and watching Louth over the years that they were better than that, and I know from watching Offaly that they’re better than that too.

“But that isn’t to say that you can automatically say that because you believe it, you will become better. Working with those players, working with Declan and with everybody in the county, to see how we make the team better in terms of the self-belief that they have, in terms of what’s required to get to a higher level, then take the action necessary to make that happen. It’s not about just talking about it, if you want to get a different outcome, you have to do something different, so you have to get that into everybody’s head, that whatever innovation we can bring to the scene, that we ought to think about doing that.”

Creating a growth culture is a big part of his plans and he spoke about the first steps he will try and take in Offaly.

“You try to bring something everywhere you go, something that you believe is best practice. And I have a lot of experience now over the years from Tyrone at all ages, right through the years. This will be my 35^th year in a row to be involved at county level so you do find out things as you go along. There’s things you work at, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but I suppose it’s about creating a growth culture. It’s okay to talk about a winning culture but you don’t know if you can win or not, you know that you can create growth and I think that’s what it’s all about. Bring a growth culture to the set up and people will see that this is what it’s about, step-by-step improvements and the demands that that will place on each and everyone involved and hopefully they will see that this is worth it and it’s worth putting in this effort.”

Offaly will operate with a small management package. Apart from Kelly and Harte, the other big man will be the new coach, former Sligo footballer Luke Bree – he has previously worked with St Vincent's in Dublin, with whom he also played, and Roscommon and Leitrim senior footballers.

At the moment, none of last year's back up team will be involved and Harte prefers to work with a tightly knit group.

“It’s not as big an issue as some have put it out to be. I’ve always had somebody working with me closely. It may not have been called joint managers but I had Gavin Devlin for 13, 14, 15 years. Tony Donnelly worked with me right back to the start of the Tyrone team, and Fr. Gerard McAleer with the minors and underage, and the first batch of seniors. I see it as another head to look at a situation. It gives us the chance to, if we spot something, we mention it to the other person, and they can mull over it, and maybe delay doing something or say yes. It’s just a thinking out loud process, you may agree or you may not, and if it comes to it and we have to get a third opinion we can do that. But it’s something that we will work through, it’s no big deal.”

One of Ireland's best known football managers, Harte is used to operating under a microscope and people expressing all sorts of opinions about him. You quickly learn not to believe everything you hear and in recent days, there has been rumours that he also spoke to Kildare, Monaghan and Westmeath about getting involved.

In Offaly, there has been a lot of debate about his appointment. Most of it, but not all, has been very positive and one regular comment is about the potential for friction between two very strong personalities, who don't suffer fools gladly. Both men are happy that they will work well together.

Harte: “There’s a whole lot of people who look at things differently, but it’s the same philosophy as glass half-empty or glass half-full. If people see problems, they’ll find problems. If people see possibilities, they’ll find possibilities. I see the possibilities.”

Kelly: “Where I am, I’m very open to any suggestions. We’ve a good handle on the players we’re looking at anyway at this stage.”

Kelly is very much the local man on the ground, familiar with every potential Offaly footballer from U14 level right up to senior and Harte is very glad to have a man with this knowledge by his side.

“It will take time to get to know them, and I’ll have to make my own relationship with them anyway. But it’s not as difficult as when we came to Louth anyway because it was Covid at the time, the boys were training with snoods and beanies, and all you could see was their eyes! I’ll tell you, it took me a long time to figure out who was who, so thanks be to God that’s not there! “There’ll be more daylight and more faces available to be seen. It’s good to go in to new ventures, to learn new things as we go along, and to meet new people. I understand and I know that this is a very sporting county, both football and hurling, hurling certainly isn’t a big issue in Tyrone in a lot of clubs. This is one of the truly dual counties and there’s not many of them that have significant teams in both codes. It’s good to be in a place like that where the GAA is very meaningful to the people.”

While there is a hurling fraternity in Derry, it will be Harte's first role with a genuine, true dual county – one where both codes are treated exactly the same, where very good footballers won't be available because of hurling, and vice versa. Sunday's round of the Senior Football Championship was a case in point. The Ferbane team that drew with Edenderry included a number of players who won't be available because of hurling – Oisin Kelly, Jack Clancy and Leon Fox while David Nally would normally play but is only on the way back from injury.

The Durrow team that had a fine win over Shamrocks included Offaly senior hurlers in Ross Ravenhill, Ciaran Burke, Dan Bourke, Mark Troy and Brian Duignan. None of them will be on the Offaly senior football panel this year but in a different era Ciaran Burke and Dan Bourke in particular would play senior football for Offaly.

There are lads in Kilcormac-Killoughey who would be excellent footballers if they gave that game priority and it will be Harte's first experience of this type of environment – on the other side of the coin, there are Offaly senior footballers well able to play hurling and who would interest senior hurling manager Johnny Kelly: Cormac Egan is the obvious one while players like Cathal Flynn, Kevin McDermott, Dylan Hyland are also good hurlers.

Harte admitted: “I haven’t worked with it very much before, but it’s ultimately up to people themselves to decide what they want to do. It would be great if there’s people who could accommodate both codes but it’s very hard to do in the modern game. There was a time when it was fit to be done but it’s not as easy now. I think people will make their own choice, whatever their first love is, they’ll go to it and there’s no reason why anybody would interfere with that.”

The process of forming a senior football panel has already begun and he is looking forward to seeing the concluding stages of the club championship.

“Championship football’s a good place to start assessing players, especially when it comes to knockout. That’s important, to see people playing at that level in a knockout game, it’s very important. It shows you quite a bit about somebody. You wouldn’t come to a final judgment on one game but you’d get to know people that merit another look. I’ve often looked around clubs and brought players in on a trial to see how they are with a mix and match of some of the panel that are there. It’s a good way to get to know more players and you know then by putting current players on triallists, you get a good feel for how those triallists are.”

There may be changes with some players gone and new players brought in. Offaly's best forward in the past two years has been Dylan Hyland but there was disappointment when he opted not to travel to Down for the final Tailteann Cup game this year. Both Harte and Kelly made a general comment when asked would there be a clean slate for players and Hyland's absence was referenced in this query.

Harte: “ I’ve an absolutely open mind, that’s why I’ve come here. I want to see who’s here and what they’re about and what their attitude is. All of those things, their skill set, their commitment, it’s the package we need to see, and I have to find out for myself about certain players.”

Kelly: “We’ve talked about individual players. But what we’re talking about is what you want as a player going forward for Offaly. There’s a lot of things to be taken into account, how they’re playing currently, but there’s a lot of players in the mix.”

Declan Kelly has long spoken about the need for a culture change in Offaly football: for players to learn what is needed to be a county footballer from their first introduction into county development squads and to live that life.

Harte is singing off the same hymn sheet, remarking:

“What we’re looking at is people who are out to give the best version of themselves. We have to let them understand what it takes to do that. It’s a kind of an unwritten contract that people have, if you want to be better and you want to make things better – and they do –, then this is the price you pay, so to speak. And if you’re prepared to pay that price and pay it in full, then there can be good outcomes from that. And the good outcomes will be growth, progress, better people, better footballers, better representatives for the county and their clubs, that’s what we want, that sense of ‘I’m doing something better, and I’m working at it’. Not to say that what you were doing wasn’t good, but why not stretch yourself? We want everybody to stretch themselves as much as they can to create something better.”

He knows that his appointment will create expectation in Offaly and see a spotlight placed on the county from outside.

“I think expectation is a good thing. I would rather have expectation on your shoulders than no hope. And if you haven’t got expectation, you’re kind of a no-hoper, and I don’t believe in that. I believe we should create an expectancy. That’s doesn’t mean you get what you would like as soon as you would want it, but there has to be signs that progress is being made and you’re heading in the right direction. That’s a pressure I would live with all day, it’s a pressure that I want, and I’m sure Declan’s the same. We don’t want to be in there without the pressure.”

Kelly agreed that this expectation is good.

“Looking across the board, if you look at development squads up along, we’re competitive. But the big thing we’re trying to get right is at senior level, that is your flagship team. We’re down in Division Three for 15 years give or take, barring an odd season. To make progress there has to be an expectancy in Offaly that we need to get out of this Division and we need to take the Tailteann Cup as a yardstick as well.”

Harte smiled when it was suggested that he might be as well away from Ulster football at this stage of his life and would embrace a challenge in a county like Offaly.

“It probably is better to be away from your own neighbours, some of them don’t take it too well if you manage their team! It’s refreshing, it’s a different scene, different people. I enjoyed the Offaly victories back in the '70s and '80s, I was at those games and you always associated Offaly with a serious edge. There was a drive in them, a competitive edge, something about them that you’d have to be on your game to beat them. That’s good, maybe we could hope to harness that again and put some more stuff to it.”

They will begin to talk to players as soon as teams start bowing out of the championship at the quarter-final stage but will leave them to their clubs at the moment.

“ I wouldn’t like to do anything that clubs might feel is interfering with their players and taking their mind off the club, because this is their time and you want to give it to them. We’ll have time when the club championship is over to really go to town on it, and hopefully then we’ll see plenty of good championship matches here and to make decisions.”

He spoke about his short term targets. “Let’s take it a year at a time, the first thing is to get to the top end of Division Three and that’s not an easy thing to do. There’s plenty of people of the same opinion who believe they can do it, so it’s a battle, it’s a challenge, and things have to go right for you. You do the best you can and you hope you get the rub of the green. If you do that then that’s a very legitimate target.”