Harte slams Cavan's approach

THE rise of the Tyrone football team to the very top of the GAA pile over the last decade has been astounding. And it has been interwoven with the soaring fortunes of their charismatic manager Mickey Harte. For the first time, Mickey tells the full story from his early years growing up in the townland of Glencull through his time as club manager of Errigal Ciaran and managing the county minors right up to the recent heady days of winning three All-Ireland senior titles. The 328 page book entitled "Presence is the only thing" which was launched in the Crannog book shop in Church St, Cavan, documents the trials and tribulations of managing county teams at various levels, and then being able to take pride in the achievements which were accomplished through All-Ireland minor, Under-21 and senior county teams successes. In a reference to 2005 (when Tyrone won the All-Ireland title for the second time) he talks about the Ulster championship semi-final encounter with Cavan in which the first game was drawn, Tyrone 0-10 Cavan 1-7, Tyrone winning the replay by 3-19 to 0-7. After defeating Down in the quarter-final, Cavan provided the opposition in the semi-final. Mickey has some unkind things to say about Cavan's approach to the game. "Cavan's approach was straightforward and brutal. They picked a team to stop us. They targeted Sean Cavanagh ruthlessly, and pulled every stroke in the book to knock him out of his stride. He was pulled and dragged, kicked and spat on. "We didn't react well. Sean was distracted and we couldn't find our usual rhythm. We were ahead entering injury time, but even that dragged on for eight minutes. In the end Cavan won a highly dubious free and earned the draw". The Tyrone manager describes their approach to the replay saying; "We needed to be different. We also knew we finally had some serious cards to play. Peter (Canavan) would start his first match in two years. Brian McGuigan had returned from Australia and was ready and Brian Dooher was fit again. "We sat on the field in Clogher one night before the replay and talked out what had happened the previous Sunday. Cavan had made the pitch very small for us, Tony said but Dooher had a slightly different take, which reflected the way we needed to impose ourselves the following week. "Tony" he said, "We made the field very small for ourselves". "We addressed Cavan's tactics during the week, but the players knew themselves. They needed to rise about the dogfight. The referee wasn't going to save them but playing our own game would". Said Harte; "We caught fire that day. We hit three goals in the first 15 minutes to knock the wind from them (Cavan) and didn't look back after that".