“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,” Harte told local reporters last weekend.
“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. We don’t want to be in there without the pressure.”
A “mutual friend” of Harte and Offaly chairman Michael Duignan got the ball rolling about Harte possibly getting quickly back into county management after leaving Derry last month, and the three-time All-Ireland SFC-winning boss didn’t hesitate when the chance arose.
The Tyrone legend reckons Offaly are better than what they showed in 2024, and instilling the “self-belief” necessary to make positive change over his three-year term will be key for him.
“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,” he said before outlining how his style has changed.
“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 35th 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 OK 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 that’s what it’s all about.”
Kelly insisted it was a “no-brainer” to have a discussion about juggling managerial commitments with Harte when the opportunity arose, and he looks forward to tapping into his “vast experience”. As for Harte, joint-management will be nothing new.
“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. But it’s something that we will work through, it’s no big deal,” Harte said.
As for targets, that all starts with the league. He managed to revolutionise Louth in his three years there (2021 to ‘23) as they climbed from the bottom tier to Division 2, and heading towards the head of Division 3 is a “legitimate target” for Offaly in his estimation.
“The first thing is to get to the top end of Division 3 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.”
