That was a very soft free against McAliskey there.
Absolutely beautiful stuff. Did we forget to mention that Morgan is an utter tramp?
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What a save by Niall Morgan.
Tyrone are struggling all over the park. Canât see them winning tbh.
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Brilliant defending by Burns.
Who was 26 for Tyrone there? He appeared to have words with Mickey Harte as he went off.
Ronan OâNeill? Brought on and taken off.
Fantastic score by Walshe. Started his run off the sideline.
Wow. That is beyond words from McManus.
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Stunning technique by Kieran Hughes at the final whistle as he controlled Rory Begganâs final kickout on his left foot.
Monaghan were superb there. Superb scores. Dessie Mones point from the corner flag was my favourite. Iâm thinking Mickey Harte may have lost the dressing room.
It could be a hangover from the Dublin humiliation in last years all Ireland semi final. Deep down the players may now realise they are not good enough and will never be good enough.
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Yeah. Bradley went off injured in first half
Tyrone are in a sort of bind re. Harte. On the one hand heâs done well in that after the decline of their great team, he has kept them very competitive and in and around the top 4 or 5 teams in the game, and since 2015 they have been closely trailing the coat trails of the big three.
On the other hand, the Tyrone public now expect to challenge for the All-Ireland and being top six or even top four isnât good enough for them.
Heâs still one of the better coaches in the game, in that the vast majority of counties would only love to have him in charge, in the same way most counties would have loved to have Mick OâDwyer in charge circa 2000 or thereabouts, but heâs fallen behind the cutting edge of tactics and is a follower rather than a leader - he has basically copied Jim McGuinnessâs tactics, which were great in 2012, but the game has moved on. Those tactics will keep you competitive, but itâs hard to see them win an All-Ireland. Both Monaghan and Tyrone got trimmings from Dublin last year but at the moment it appears Malachy OâRourke has learned more from that than Harte has. But to be fair to him, he doesnât have a Colm McFadden or a Michael Murphy or a Conor McManus, so maybe the reality is that Tyrone ultimately donât have the players good enough to win an All-Ireland, not at the moment anyway.
I suspect his personality and age are increasingly rubbing people in Tyrone up the wrong way. Itâs pretty much acknowledged in public that he is distant from the current players and I donât think that was the case in the 2000s. The thing that came out last year about the team saying rosary before matches was weird and I canât imagine all of the players were comfortable with it. Other managers wouldnât get away with it but Harte does because of his status and the personal tragedy that befell him. You do get the feeling that not all of the players are entirely happy with him.
The defeat by Dublin could prove, or possibly is already proving, to be a seminal event that ultimately does for Harte. I read an interview with him in the Irish Times at the start of this yearâs league. The first thing he talked about was Con OâCallaghanâs goal in the semi-final and his attempt to rationalise what happened smacked of somebody in total denial, almost deluded. There was no acknowledgement at all that anything had to change. Defeats like that are hard to get over but they can be got over. But the first thing you need to do is acknowledge what went wrong and acknowledge that something needs to change. Itâs that apparent refusal of Harte to acknowledge that anything needs to change that would piss players off more than anything and make them doubt the viability of the whole project.
Still, I wouldnât write him off completely yet - that was a very good game of football today, Tyrone didnât play badly, and they still could end up in the Super 8s. But they will need to find out something extra about themselves in the qualifiers that they donât appear to know as of yet.
The difficulty Tyrone have regarding Harte in the possibly short term, but certainly not too far off medium term, is that when it becomes obvious that it really is time to go, he may not see that. And because of his status and his personal tragedy, and because it seems like football is the main thing keeping him going, Tyrone could find it very difficult to engineer a way of getting him to step aside gracefully.
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The 2008 Championship and a great Tyrone team isnât terribly relevant to this current average Tyrone crop.
Some Tyrone folk are living in the past. They need to cop on and realise they are not as good as the top 3 or 4 teams in the country and they need to have a change of management. Harte is now like Wenger living on his reputation. The game has moved on but harte hasnt.
Reality slowly dawning for the Tyrone cheerleaders.
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@caoimhaoin has been making those two very points time and time again for a few years now. He was subjected to disgusting personal attacks from lapsed poster @Nembo_Kid for making them.
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I think Tyrone folk realise that Harte has earned the right to leave when heâs ready and on his own terms.
They will never be another Mickey Harte
Thereâs a sort of inconsistency here though.
Critics of Tyrone say two things - i) that they havenât the players, and ii) that Harte doesnât know what heâs doing.
Yet they have been at minimum top 4 in the country since 2015.
Those two assertions appear somewhat contradictory.
So, is their failure to advance beyond a certain level more down to them not having the players, or is it more down to Harteâs failings?
If they donât have the players, one could say that Harte has done very well to keep them so competitive.
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