Nothing to be gained from kicking Mickey Harte
Inside Track | Joe Carroll
My feeling of disappointment, mixed with a little anger, over Mickey Harte’s sudden departure from this county, expressed here in print, has subsided. Put that down to time being a great healer, or maybe, the success enjoyed by his successor. Harte’s move to Derry wasn’t the wisest he’s ever made, but I’m not going to kick someone when’s he’s down.
What annoyed me most at the time was the word that Harte and his sidekick, Gavin Devlin, had agreed to stay heres for a further two years. They had completed a three-year stint, and during it raised the county team’s profile.
No GAA manager is ever going to sign a contract or anything like that on taking up a post, so if the there was an agreement that the two Tyronemen would remain, it would have only been through word of mouth, with maybe a handshake thrown in. In this case, ambition was always going to be a winner over loyalty.
In his time here, Harte brought Louth from the bottom tier of the league to the second-highest through a couple of promotions. Division Two status was then saved and after that there was a first appearance in the Leinster final in 13 years and only the second in over six decades. Not since 2010 was public support so high.
Can the team go any higher, we wondered as 2024 loomed. Well, it has, but not with Harte at the helm. Rookie inter-county manager, Ger Brennan, has replicated what his predecessor did last year – and more. The predicted fall-out didn’t materialise.
Louth are still in Division Two, have had a second successive Leinster final appearance, and gone further than ever before in the championship, as it is now framed, by reaching the All-Ireland quarter-finals. Everyone’s looking ahead.
It wasn’t only in this county that Harte’s decision to leave to take up a similar post caused consternation. Had he gone to any county but Derry (or Armagh) there wouldn’t there have been such an outcry in Tyrone.
And many Derry folk weren’t best pleased, even though they were getting a manager with a proven All-Ireland record at three levels. The age-old rivalry with their next door neighbours kicked in, and for them, what Harte needed to do to justify his presence at Owenbeg was win an All-Ireland – and soon.
It went well in the early part of the season, a McKenna Cup win followed by top spot in the league’s Division One with a defeat of Dublin in the final.
What was going to stop the Sam Maguire Cup finding a resting place by the Foyle for the first time in 31 years? Derry were third-favourites behind Kerry and Dublin in the betting.
Answer: four championship defeats, the final one to Kerry on the day Louth went out to Donegal. If was then noises about Harte’s future in his new surroundings grew to a deafening pitch.
The players reportedly saying they’d be happy to let – happy to let? Huh – their manager see out his first year, was hardly a ringing endorsement. Not risking being pushed, Harte walked.
He would have had no regrets about leaving his native county to come here. Having delivered the Red Hand three senior titles and others at minor and under-21, he was justified in thinking his request for an extension of just one year would be granted.
On being refused, he probably saw Louth as a tower of refuge, and after that, Derry as the best place to further his All-Ireland ambitions. Next move? Who knows – but don’t bet on there not being one.