FOOTBALL/Championship 2004: Keith Duggan talks to the man who has guided Tyrone through the highs and lows of a sporting life, and helped a county mourn the death of players

Mickey Harte has been failing all his life. Failure is the abiding hymn of a man associated with the most significant success in the modern Gaelic football. After a century of unfulfilled dreams, last summer Tyrone ascended as pantheons of the game that was regarded as dark in traditional quarters and as the future elsewhere.

Harte, in his first year as senior manager, was identified as the soul of that fierce and unforeseen summer, a polite man with bold views on the game. Then, last winter, when Tyrone's season became wrapped up in the sudden, unfathomable death of Cormac McAnallen, it was Harte's voice that shone.

His tone was plain, aching, and dignified. His voice was somehow comforting. Harte helped leave the country with a profound respect for the young man and with a deeper understanding of Tyrone football.

To know where Harte has come from, you could do worse than sit with him in Kelly's Inn, at the heart of the Ballygawley community since 1931. It was certainly one of the more exotic spots on the local landscape on which Mary and Peter Harte raised him, along with 10 other children.

"I had one sister who died when she was still a baby, sadly, I never knew her, but my six brothers and two other sisters are still alive, thank God. My Mam was just a lovely woman who never left the house - she just had a habit of making friends and they would come to her. And my Dad was the man that introduced us all to Gaelic football."

His parents did not live to see - or feel - the sense of happiness in Tyrone last September and could have little imagined their son as the leader of a movement that many had begun to feel was impossible. They did, however, catch plenty of glimpses of their son's nascent talent for the game, from his days on the county minor team of 1972 through to his long and distinguished senior career that was ended prematurely by the "fallout".

At 17, Harte played on a Tyrone team that lost the All-Ireland minor final to Cork by 3-11 to 2-11 and, a year later, he opted out of the senior team to concentrate on his studies and as captain of the Omagh VS team for the McRory Cup. His school lost that final while the Tyrone seniors became the darlings of the county by winning the Ulster championship for the first time since 1957. Harte watched from the stands.

When Tyrone's next Ulster title came around, in 1984, Harte was in limbo and had managed to achieve notoriety as the man at the root cause of the famous feud that split the Ballygawley club. The bones of the story are that when Harte was sent-off while playing for Glencull, he walked away because officials at the Ballygawley Ciarán's senior club would not allow him to continue managing his parish team.

"The problem was another boy who was sent off with me was allowed represent the club at handball the following evening. I just couldn't see how this was fair and I could not accept it. I had the unconditional support of all the other Glencull players so I walked."

That was in 1982 and Harte and the players from six or seven other families in Ballygawley did not kick competitive football again for almost a decade. Harte, no longer affiliated to a registered GAA club, had to abandon his Tyrone career at the age of 28. Community life was sundered - not through fists or blatant rows, but worse, in poisonous resentment. "People might say hello if they met in a pub or the shop. But just about."

The length of the feud was remarkable, but more so was the response of Glencull. They immersed themselves in their club as never before, building a small social centre, fundraising, running a pre-school creche, and playing challenge games all across Ulster.

The years passed and Harte began raising a family and his days in a Tyrone jersey quietly died. But he did not blink. In 1989, Ballygawley made it to a Tyrone championship final and he went along with some other Glencull boys to take a look. "We didn't really care who won, but probably some part of us didn't want them to lose either. I suppose it was indifference."

Some GAA people went to their graves during the time of the split. Others, like Stevie Canavan, missed out on the opportunity to play for Tyrone. Only when Peter Canavan reached adolescence and it became apparent Glencull was harbouring a genius did the hard lines begin to soften. His emergence coincided with the work of men like Barney Hoarish and Brendan Harkin and Fr Seán Hegarty to work a compromise.

Peter Canavan became a member of the Killycrannagh hurling team so he could play football for the Tyrone minors. In 1991, Errigal Ciarán was formed and Glencull was affiliated, but retained its autonomy, winning the Tyrone junior championship.

A year later, a team drawn from all four parishes played together again and in 1993, they won the Tyrone championship for the first time in 62 years. That winter, they took Ulster. It was a time of celebration, but the afterglow of bitterness was vivid. Even today, some people cannot talk of it. Mickey can talk about it, however.

"There is regret we missed out on so much football, but I can line it up with my own life. I learned more about life in that time than in any other period of management. It taught me a lot about loyalty and friendship and principle. I admit I have that stubborn streak in me and I did not think it would last so long . . . none of us ever wanted to be outside the GAA. But in a strange way, it left us with a stronger community."

It is fantastic to consider that a man who was so firmly outside the pale a decade ago would manage the All-Ireland champions. But Harte's path has never been conventional. He does not know how or why he was appointed Tyrone minor manager. "Maybe they saw my managerial skills with Glencull," he laughs. But it was then the seeds of 2004 were born. All through his adult life, Harte had maintained a burning and unspoken ambition to right the loss of the 1972 All-Ireland.

The years 1991 to 1997 shaped him as a football manager. Tyrone's minor record then needs to be restated - in 1991, lost the Ulster final to Donegal by a point. In 1992, lost the semi-final to an Armagh team that went on to the All-Ireland final. In 1993, won Ulster, but went no further. In 1994, lost a replay to Armagh with a last-minute goal. In 1995, won the Ulster minor league and got destroyed by Derry in the first game of the championship. In 1996, lost to Fermanagh in the first round. In 1997, Paul McGirr died after an injury he received on the field in Omagh. That September, Tyrone lost the All-Ireland final. In 1998, with the county in mourning from the Omagh bombing, Tyrone won the All-Ireland minor title.

The fruit of the Tyrone senior team belongs to those seasons of minor failure and triumph. Harte often claims the spirit of Paul McGirr has stayed with the team. And he sees the present generation of senior stars differently. While we see in Brian Dooher a man who approaches the game with a will that is frightening, Harte recalls comforting a boy who sat inconsolable in a dressing-room after the 1993 minor loss.

He was close to the edge himself on several occasions - he wanted to leave hours after the Fermanagh loss and felt broken after the 1997 All-Ireland final, bereft of answers after he felt he had nothing tangible to explain the death of Paul McGirr.

The Harte children grew up with the emotions of this period. The boys, Michael, Mark and Matthew all play the game. His daughter Mikhaela went with him to his first minor trial - at which 240 kids turned up - and just got in the habit of accompanying to training and to games.

Mark played minor and under-21 and was brought into the senior team by his father and has fought for his place despite whispers of favouritism. This spring in the league, his play has improved at an extraordinary rate and his free-kicking, in the absence of Peter Canavan, hasbeen immaculate. "People said Mark was only brought in because of me and that casts a question mark on my integrity. He is my son and if anything I judge him more keenly and harshly because of that. I believe his scoring return all through warrants his inclusion"

In spite - or more pertinently because - of the Glencull years, Harte has a heightened sense of family. He is strongly Catholic and abstains from drink and through his work as a PE teacher in Omagh believes in trying to teach children about life through sport. That is how he taught himself. Over the years he collected the writings of basketball coaches John Wooden from UCLA and Phil Jackson. Wooden had a saying, "The most important ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team".

It is one of the contradictory truths of Harte that he effected the meaning of this statement in a team that shone with a star as bright as Peter Canavan. With Fr Gerard McAleer, Harte brought a religious dimension to his teams. Fr Ger still says mass and many of the 1997 gang gathers annually for Paul McGirr's anniversary mass.

He knows that people are different, "But you do need a higher value in a team because higher values is what makes the person," he argues. "If it is God, then it is God, if it is a separate, personal value, then it is that. When people get together, though, there is a common value. There is a spirit."

He is, he believes, a friend to those players he has managed, or at least he tries to be. Sometimes, he looks in a mirror and is surprised by the man staring back, the angular features are recognisable, but not the greying hair or the tightening of the eyes.

There were nights last winter when the Sam Maguire sat in the Harte household, generally on its way from one function to another and a ripple of incredulity, fresh again, would travel among them. In retrospect, it has seemed like a fast journey.

Harte forgets nothing: he recalls travelling to Dungannon in the 1960s with his father to see the great Down team and absorbing the general assumption that Tyrone, his county, would lose. He hates that lack of expectation, the apathy that sets in and allows communities - teams - to settle for less.

"It's a sneaky thing," he says. "And it creeps into people. Somehow you have to strip out the mediocre and believe you are as good as, and better than the rest. It is not an arrogance, but it is a belief."

That is what last year was about: shedding the skin of mediocrity. It did not matter to Harte that ugly comments trailed in Tyrone's wake or that they were branded as champions of a "system" that was reaping anarchy on the cherished values of football. Ten years in the wilderness toughens the skin to such opinions.

"We don't have a system, at least no more than we ever had. Look at our minor videos - the same ethos is there. If a forward loses the ball, he tracks back. Why should one set of players just abdicate responsibility when they lose the football. But also, look at our scoring rates. These do not reflect the mindset of a negative team. Last year, a narrow view emerged after 30 seconds of play in the semi-final against Kerry and it was presented as if that was a template for the way we play."

If Harte has toppled the standard view that football should exist along predetermined positions and tactics, then he is happy. There is a streak in him that loathes the conservatism of the GAA. He believes in 10 years his methods will be regarded as simple and quaint and that is why he is planning a different strategy for this season. The point missed about Tyrone last year was that their most significant game was not against Kerry but in the quarter-final against Fermanagh. They ripped the hearts out of their neighbouring county, 1-21 to 0-5. It was impressive, a cold, angry performance. "It had to be. It had to be," says Harte. "That was punishment for losing the year before against Sligo. That was us getting rid of that."

Of all the players who embodied that ethic of stubborn persistence, Cormac McAnallen carried it. He and Harte were close. On the morning his captain died, Harte received a phone call from the undertaker, Paudge Quinn. It was about 5.30. He rose and walked about the house in kind of a trance.

"The worst thing was telling the children. It was like someone in the family and we were very, very upset. I waited till about seven or so and then woke Mikhaela and told her. And see, back in 2001 before the under-21 semi-final against Galway, I had taken Cormac aside and told him, you'll be unique. You will be the man to lift the minor, under-21 and senior All-Ireland cups. And he just took that in. He completed two and he would, I am certain, have lifted the third in the next couple of years.

"But Mikhaela must have had the same vision because the first thing she said was, 'that can't be right. He won't get to lift all three now.' I went into Mark. He had been good mates with Paul McGirr and when I told him, he just said, 'Not again'."

Harte says he thinks about McAnallen several times a day now. If he is driving and going through the team in his mind, he imagines Cormac with the bunch of guys that are injured. He still thinks of him as coming back. Sometimes radio disc jockeys play the cheesy old Spandau Ballet song Gold that McAnallen chose as his song of inspiration. And that makes him well up. On other afternoons, he puts on videos from last year's championship and there is the pale and copper-gold features. And he remembers conversations they had together.

It would be wrong to say he is haunted by McAnallen's passing, but he worries sometimes some of his players may be, that they reason if someone as strong as their captain could go in his sleep, so might they.Cormac's death placed a huge burden on his own beliefs and values.

"The only sense I can make," he says slowly, "is that if we are christians and we do believe, then we have to accept God works in his own ways. Cormac McAnallen was a great example of the good life and by his passing, perhaps he influenced more people than if he had lived until he was 80 . . . Cormac's legacy will be remembered for a long, long time."

And yet, it was hard to see the good at the memorial mass for Cormac at Ballintubber Abbey on the eve of Tyrone's resumption of football in Mayo. There were renewed scenes of anguish and Harte felt heavy and sad and there was a solemnity about the game the following day, which Tyrone won in a state of suppressed emotional turmoil.

The wheel has moved inch by inch since that afternoon until one day it became acceptable to laugh at training sessions again. The All-Ireland champions moved slowly to this point, the eve of their championship defence. They harbour the sense that the spirit of McAnallen is with them.

But. On paper they are weakened. Tyrone versus Derry is the primal scream of the Ulster championship. For that hour of football, there can be no hereafter. All is contained in the now.