In his first weekend in the Faithful County, Mickey Harte could be forgiven for wondering what he had let himself in for.
Six days after it was announced that Harte was going to be part of a joint management ticket with current Offaly senior football manager Declan Kelly, he was at Daingean to watch county champions Tullamore beat Rhode by 0-8 to 0-5, in a game where Rhode scored their first point from play in the 55th minute.
Meanwhile, in Tullamore, Ferbane and Edenderry played out a 1-8 to 2-5 draw, where Cian Farrell’s stunning goal for the Reds was out of kilter with the desperately poor shooting that both sets of forwards delivered over the course of the hour.
In the other two games, Durrow beat Shamrocks by 2-12 to 1-7 with county senior hurlers – who won’t be available for football selection – at 3, 6, 10 and 14, and Bracknagh beat Ballycommon in a dull 1-12 to 0-7 encounter.
Still, all around the county, there was excitement at the prospect of the man who guided Tyrone to three Sam Maguire Cups taking the helm of the struggling county side.
For Mickey himself, that in itself made a change.
“It probably is better to be away from your own neighbours, some of them don’t take it too well if you manage their team!” he quipped, speaking to local reporters at a media briefing in Glenisk O’Connor Park.
“It’s refreshing, it’s a different scene, different people. I enjoyed the Offaly victories back in the 70s and 80s, I was at those games and you always associated Offaly with a serious edge.
“There was a drive in them, a competitive edge, something about them that you’d have to be on your game to beat them.
“That’s good, maybe we could hope to harness that again and put some more stuff to it.
“You’re looking at the level that the team plays at right at the minute, and you figure out can they be better than that? And I think we know from looking at them that they could”.
In what will be his 35th consecutive year of involvement at county level, Harte made it clear that to making this happen won’t be an easy journey for the players, regardless of their enthusiasm levels.
“What we’re looking at is people who are out to give the best version of themselves. We have to let them understand what it takes to do that.
“It’s a kind of an unwritten contract that people have, if you want to be better and you want to make things better – and they do – then this is the price you pay, so to speak.
“And if you’re prepared to pay that price and pay it in full, then there can be good outcomes from that.
“And the good outcomes will be growth, progress, better people, better footballers, better representatives for the county and their clubs, that’s what we want, that sense of ‘I’m doing something better, and I’m working at it’.
“Not to say that what you were doing wasn’t good, but why not stretch yourself?
“We want everybody to stretch themselves as much as they can to create something better”.
On the question of joint management, Harte was asked if the idea of two strong characters might struggle to work together, which he immediately dismissed.
“It’s not as big an issue as some have put it out to be” he replied.
“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, and if it comes to it and we have to get a third opinion we can do that.”
Offaly chairperson Michael Duignan weighed in, saying that from the county’s perspective, this wasn’t about titles, but getting the right men in the room.
“From a county point of view, ambition is my biggest word, one that I always use. If we don’t believe that we can win All-Irelands again, then it’s never going to happen” said the former All-Ireland hurling champion.
“That’s the standard you have to set, that’s what you have to believe in. If we don’t believe it, and if the lads (management) don’t believe it, then the players won’t believe it.
“We have to create that culture of excellence across the board, and what we try to do is bring in the best people we could.
“As for tags and names, we call them joint managers but what they are is two outstanding men who are going to work together for the betterment of Offaly football.”
