Messages

No league or provincial groups. Gone.

Two Tiers/Four groups in each/Play H and A against 3 teams/with New York and London added to groups in the bottom tier.

Top two qualify for last 16 with a two random matches being held in the States, New York/Boston/Polo Grounds

QF

SF

F at HQ

And there you have a winner quite literally.

No. Do you honestly believe Mickey Harte and Tony Donnelly are going to keep players in the 15 who are too this or that. Yes the team isnt 2003 or 2005 nor should it be. Sometimes we forget how talented these players are - each one would be a star player in any other team. There is too muck criticism here much like  in 2004, 2006 and 2007. The same lines are being rolled out.

I look at this team and I see a group of players who are more hungrier and eager to prove their worth than their counterparts. I see a team that can win another All Ireland trophy and one which will eventually lose a few players and integrate younger guys when Mickey sees fit. If the likes of Peter Harte cannot step up then thats too bad - the best players that fit the system and opponents on the day should play. This group literally took our game to a new level which has now been matched by Cork in particular in terms of preparation. Get off their backs and support them on the next step in Longford. This team has learned from 2009 and 2010 and we are where we are. Its now up to Tyrone to make the best of their own situation. I'm sure they will.

Pathetic argument. Ian McCrea like in fact.

Especially since we are such a threat to other counties. Tyrone are about 100 years ahead of every other county in terms of structures at every level. Come on up and see Garvaghy centre of excellence when its finished. You'll love it.

If you think Longford will put one over on Tyrone think again. More likely Armagh will be beaten at home.

Mickey will have the team fully prepared. Will be good to play a team thats not entirely set up to sit back and lunge a few high balls in. Says something about the quality of Tyrone that teams think of us before they think of their own game plans. Maybe McGuiness is too focused on being a football guru than just a good coach. Do Dongeal have a game plan or it is just fouling and saying we have michael murphy.

Tyrone have to be more accurate in front of goal the next day. Would love to meet Donegal again to pull a blanket on them and lunge a few up to Kevin Hughes in full forward. Roll on Tyrone football and the long summer.

Tyrone will get back in the series. No doubt about that - glad to be out of the ulster cesspit and concentrate on playing football. Poor old Donegal won't get far if they can't learn how to tackle properly. Glad to hear RTE no brainers tipping Longford blah blah - any chance for good old whine against Tyrone. Can't wait for the next game now with the best squad of players in Ireland. The 1st half showed why with our shooting boots on (from frees Pete!) that we should really have swallowed up Donegal. Surprised how poor Dongegal were after the hype surrounding the game - they were terrible, worse i've seen for a while now.

Tyrone have the attitude and players to work their way into August. Mickey knows the way forward and it isnt through Ulster. Not for this great team anyway.

Tyrone fans berating their own team even before they have played..sad that really sad. Optimism and hope are what being fans are all about. I'm behind the team all the way to the final.

Monaghans penalty: "It looks like its gonna be a good agricultural wellie"

Donegal look to be promoted.

8 points  - Derry have +24 difference
8 points -  Tyrone have +16 difference

Antrim vs Derry
Meath vs Tyrone

Do Tyrone now have a chance of promotion?

Laois 0.08  Tyrone 1.10

Laois 0.02 Tyrone 1.06

I heard during the week that highland radio are covering it with good old martin mchugh. Thank goodness.

If it on setanta will there be any streams to watch...?

By Dermot Crowe

Sunday January 16 2011

I N the large red-brick parochial house in Donaghmore, Fr Gerard McAleer is recounting the moment he heard of Michaela McAreavey's death. It is Friday morning and his phone rings constantly.

He has his duties as parish priest to attend to but on this week nothing is normal or routine or easily anticipated. People call to the door to sympathise. He goes on air to articulate, as best he can, the pain of a people shocked by an event that occurred on an island thousands of miles away and which, if a work of fiction, might be judged too outlandish.

"I was standing there," he motions, pointing to the range in the kitchen where he conducts his work, "and talking to a friend of mine . . . then the phone rings. And Mark, the oldest of the family, said, 'Fr Gerard, Mark here, how are you?' I says, 'not bad Mark, how are you? He says, 'I have awful news, bad news, tragic news, our Michaela, Michaela's dead'. You know, I waited a minute to get my breath and I said 'what happened?' He said, 'She's in her room and she's dead. She was found in the bathroom'. I said, 'was there an accident or something?' He said, 'we don't know'.

"He was just ringing around at that stage. And about ten minutes later, or less, Mickey's brother came to the door with his wife; they were on their way down to Ballygawley. They said, 'has anyone been on to you?' And I said, 'yes'. And they came in here and we started to ring round other family. That was as much as we knew at that time."

He remembers Mark being "remarkably composed" until his voice broke when he announced that his sister was dead. "Then, of course, my mind went into overdrive because I cleared my phone (of messages) because it was full the night before and I had one from Michaela. I felt bad about that. And it was just a very brief text to say how happy she was and so on. I had texted her before to thank her for the beautiful day at the wedding. I got into the car and went down to Ballygawley. The family were gathering and it was just total devastation."

Fr McAleer and the Hartes go back a long way. He started school in Omagh CBS in 1964 with Mickey's older brother Martin. "And at that time Peter Harte, their brother, was playing for Tyrone. And to have somebody in the class playing for Tyrone at the time was a big thing. Peter only died a couple of months ago from cancer. He was president of the Ulster Council as well and a potential GAA presidential candidate."

In the early 1970s, Fr McAleer's brother Colm and Mickey Harte attended the school and played football together. "It kinda went on from there. The relationship developed. I would have been in that house over the last 25 years a couple of times a week, not in recent times as much since I had to give up the football. Often till the late hours."

He baptised the two youngest of the Harte children, Michaela and Matthew, and he saw their only daughter grow up and they formed a close bond. "Michaela was born on the last day of the year, 1983. I baptised her in Dungannon because they lived there for a short time before they built a new house in Ballygawley. I baptised her on Sunday the 15th of January. I remember it was an awful day. I think the electricity went off in the chapel. It was just two weeks after her birth, she was the third child of the family Christened. Mickey and I took over the (Tyrone) minor team in 1991 and at that stage Michaela and Matthew would have been out to training with us and at all the matches, trials, and that went on till I gave up at the end of 1997. And then I saw her go to school and grow up, grow into a young girl and beautiful young woman."

Fr McAleer recently had a heart stent inserted and admits he comes from a family with a history of cardiac problems. Before going to hospital he confided in Mickey Harte. "Funny, I told Mickey that I was going into the hospital, first time ever in my life, and he was sworn to secrecy. About two days later I got a text from Michaela: 'Daddy told me. Just want to know how you are?'"

There is profound sympathy too in the GAA community for Michaela husband John McAreavey. In a photograph which appeared in recent days he is seen raising the cup after Tullylish won the Down intermediate football championship last October. This is the moment all Gaelic players aspire towards; the perfect end to a championship with the symbolic hoisting of the trophy declaring your side triumphant. In the background, among the clapping supporters, are Michaela and Bishop John McAreavey, who married the couple and is John's uncle. They are overjoyed.

This was arguably the proudest moment of John McAreavey's Gaelic career and his wife is there at close quarters, supportive, just as she has been so often beside her father during the great, and not so great, days that Tyrone football have been part of. Tullylish were outsiders when they faced neighbours and rivals Annaclone in the final. The victory was a significant milestone for the club and the experience was embellished with John McAreavey, a former Down senior player, winning the man-of-the-match accolade. This year the club will compete in the senior football championship but the events of the last week have imposed a dreadful burden on a community united in sorrow.

"He had the honour of being the first captain in 42 years to lift a senior championship trophy," says Tullylish chairman John McDermott, "so that was a big day in his life. Our last win was a junior title in 1968. It was a goal feast, 4-7 to 4-6, and a local derby. We won the semi-final by a point and the final by a point. I thought they showed great resolve and character to win. They were one point down in the semi-final and he (John) got the equaliser in injury-time and then set up the winning point."

On Friday night, they held a mass for John and the two families in the local church in Lawrencetown, the village where the couple had planned to set up home. "The church was packed to the rafters," says McDermott, "even some of the older members of the congregation can't remember the church being full like that before; we had to bring extra chairs in and people were nearly seated on the altar. It was an indication of how much they thought of Michaela."

McDermott and other club members and officers are due to attend the wake at the Harte family home in Glencull today. Tullylish has received messages of condolence from all over Ireland and from clubs in Co Down. "We have messages from Waterford, Galway, places like that; we have found it very heartening."

He is asked to describe John. "John is a lovely fella, he really is. He is club captain, it is a role he takes very seriously, he is very conscious that there is a responsibility and image to be portrayed, and he would look after himself well, watch his diet and demand that same level of commitment from his team-mates. He is also our assistant treasurer. John is not the type of fella who plays and then goes off home; he is actively involved in the administrative side."

As a player he describes him as "very good, strong, in great physical condition -- really, a very brave, tenacious footballer, well capable of winning his own ball. He is an integral part of our team."

Tyrone GAA has been traumatised by this latest loss which follows in the wake of a number of other tragedies which Mickey Harte and his family were affected by. Fourteen years ago this summer, Paul McGirr died not far away in Omagh after an accidental collision with the Armagh goalkeeper in the Ulster minor football championship. The day he died, Mark Harte, Michaela's brother, was playing in the same Tyrone forward line. They also played together on the Errigal Ciarán under 12 team.

The day McGirr died Mickey Harte went to Tyrone county hospital along with Fr Gerard McAleer, having managed the earlier victory. They were totally unprepared for what followed. "I remember we met a fella coming down the stairs," recalls Fr McAleer, "one of the drivers who took some of the lads to training, he opened his mouth and he started crying. He said 'he is gone'. 'Gone where?' we asked, we thought he might have been removed to Belfast. He said, 'he is dead'."

Fr McAleer strives to explain why this latest bereavement has had the impact it does. Michaela wasn't an inter-county player like Paul McGirr, or Cormac McAnallen, who lost his life at 24 in 2004. But she was so closely identified with the Tyrone team on match days that it is impossible to overlook her place in the narrative. "The tragedies Tyrone have had," says Fr McAleer. "Paul McGirr's death in 1997. Kevin Hughes' brother in '97, killed in a car accident, later his sister killed in a car accident, Cormac's death in 2004. I thought when I went out and announced that (Cormac's death) at Mass here it could not get any worse. I suppose people are thinking with this Tyrone team is there some kind of a jinx attached to them? And Mickey is a high-profile individual and well respected. The family are well known as a very upright and honourable family. Faith plays a very important part in their lives and faith is tested at times like this.

"I also think there is a lot of support from cross-community -- the fact that Linfield had a minute's silence and Rangers sent a text or email or something like that, expressing their sympathy, and from the different political parties across the north.

"At this stage it's very, very hard to say, and Mickey made this point the other night, that anything good can come out of this. Something good came out of all the others. It's very hard to see that. But I think when you have people from the Protestant community and other faiths, and other political parties, praying and offering their sympathy -- that is something that might not have happened ten years ago."

Yesterday, the First Minister and DUP MLA Peter Robinson called to extend his sympathy; he walked into a house that is GAA to the core. Earlier in the week, Tom Elliott, the Official Unionist Party leader, who caused a stir when he said he would never attend a GAA game last year, also called there to pay his respects. Those visits reflect how the tragedy has melted community divisions.

The chairman of Tyrone County Board, Ciarán McLaughlin, says with validity: "At the end of the day this has transcended the boundaries of what we are supposed to be as human beings." And of Tom Elliott's visit, he observes. "He has decided and felt the need to show his support to the Harte family and the McAreavey family. That can only be applauded. And that is only one example if you are talking of cross-community."

Michaela didn't play Gaelic football to any notable level but her passion for the game was genuine and, like her father, she saw no distinction between the sport she loved and the life she lived. "She was fanatical about football, she kept the papers and cut out everything about them. That helped form a good relationship between herself and her dad too, they had so much in common," as Fr McAleer puts it. "And she was so accepted among the players. I never heard or been aware of any player saying, 'what is she hanging around for?'"

The Tyrone team has continued in Mickey Harte's absence, as he expressly wished, and when Fr McAleer rang Brian Dooher's home to ask him to do a reading at the funeral Mass tomorrow his wife told him he had just left for training. The chairman of Errigal Ciarán, Cathal McAnenly, summed up local feelings. "The area is totally devastated, shocked, it's very hard to come to terms with it. I suppose in the last few days people were just rallying around to prepare for the return of Michaela." He called to the Harte home on Monday. "It is not a visit you want to make and not one that should have to be made."

All three of Mickey Harte's sons play football with Errigal Ciarán, where Mark is the club PRO. "It should never ever have happened," says McAnenly. "She went out to start off the happiest time in her life and to see that happen is incomprehensible. I would hope that the support they get from family members, neighbours and GAA members throughout Ireland will be some level of comfort to them in their grief. But it's going to be very, very difficult."

Tyrone GAA chairman Ciarán McLaughlin was estimating a crowd of between 10,000 and 15,000 mourners at the funeral tomorrow. Yesterday and today, at the public wake, they were expecting to filter 200 sympathisers through the family home each hour where Michaela's remains were resting. She was laid out in her wedding dress. "I said to Mickey that he will see, he will know most likely, but he will see for himself what he and Michaela and the Harte family mean to people.

"I think the scale of Cormac's funeral was immense. I think in the intervening period Mickey has touched on so many other lives. Yes, the GAA absolutely but also other sections of the community. I was in Leitrim last year at the removal of Philly McGuinness' remains and Mickey went down the following week to talk to the club and that was one example of how he was able to touch upon people and relate experiences he has had himself.

"We set up the onsite book of condolences on Wednesday evening about half six and had a quick look there at 12 today (Friday) and there were over 1,000 messages on it at that stage. And that is only that one. The emails we have been getting, you could see from those how he has been in places we never knew about. If someone needed help he went and assisted that club or family or school. There are so many different ones."

How Mickey Harte responds to this is not a question lightly considered. The notion of him not at some point returning to manage the team which his daughter adored is hard to buy, however. "This (Tyrone) team is reaching the end of an era and it's time to build a new team and that is a challenge for him and he certainly thrives on a challenge," says Fr McAleer. "He may need it as a therapy as well. Can I see him coming back? He will make an almighty effort and I know of few people who would be as well equipped to deal with this as Mickey Harte. I am not saying it is going to be easy."

- Dermot Crowe

[Heroic Harte's resilience never more needed]

The Irish Times - Saturday, January 15, 2011

Heroic Harte's resilience never more needed

SIDELINE CUT: No strangers to tragedy, Tyrone and Mickey Harte are again called upon to cope with dreadful, heartbreaking circumstances, writes KEITH DUGGAN

OH, TYRONE: Gaelic Games has a habit of producing wonderful teams whose spirit long outlasts the thrill of their accomplishments in September All-Irelands. But has any Irish sports team or manager ever brought such joy to its people while carrying not just the weight of great expectation but a staggering litany of heartbreak? Has any sporting figure been required to find the perfect words on impossibly sad and inexplicable days as frequently as Mickey Harte has over the past 13 years?

Even on this unfathomably dark and cruel week for his family, he has somehow found it within himself to find words that served, first and foremost, to console others.

Resilience and grace under pressure have always been at the heart of the immortal Tyrone football days which Harte has presided over since 1997. From the emotional afternoon in September 1998, (nobody who stood around a grinning Cormac McAnallen near the wire at the old Canal End tunnel listening to the kid – for that is what he was then – rhapsodise about what the day meant will forget it) to the amber-lit September Sunday in 2008 when Tyrone won their third senior All-Ireland of the decade, those teams with the Red Hand crest seemed to play in irrepressible bursts of inspiration and instinct that no other team could hope to equal.

Lest it be forgotten, the 1997/98 Tyrone minors played through the confusion and grief of the death of their team-mate Paul McGirr after an accidental collision in the Ulster championship. Lest it be forgotten, they somehow managed to win the Ulster title anyway and between drawing the All-Ireland semi-final against Kerry and turning up for the replay in Parnell Park against Kerry (on the afternoon that Princess Diana was buried in London), their young midfielder Kevin Hughes lost his sister in a car accident.

Lest it be forgotten, Mickey Harte's first All-Ireland final – after that harrowing summer – ended with his trying to console a young team who had emptied themselves and still lost to a wonderful Laois team. Lest it be forgotten, he was so exhausted by the emotion of that summer that he might have stopped then but for the intervention and persuasion of a number of people, including his young daughter.

And, lest it be forgotten, when they did win that first All-Ireland a year later, it was Laois they beat and Laois boys who formed a guard of honour to salute them from the field. And lest it be forgotten too, they had to return to an Omagh that was still obliterated by that terrible August bombing. Those young footballers were the first reason that anyone in the town or county had cause to cheer about life since that day. They have been cheering since.

It was the beginning of a magnificent football era, a period in the history of Tyrone which transcended sport. And Mickey Harte has been on the sideline for all of the best days and worst days.

Mickey Harte is no easy man to categorise: impeccably polite and absolutely determined, reasoned but fearless about speaking his mind, a pioneer, deeply religious and utterly open to learning about sport and about life from diverse sources. And stubborn too! Harte has become such a respected manager that his playing days are often overlooked. Lest it be forgotten, he played on a fine Tyrone minor team in 1972 but opted out to study the following year and missed out on a rare year of Ulster minor and senior success. (The minors won that year's All-Ireland, a title the county would not win again until '98).

And lest it be forgotten, Harte was the man at the epicentre of the furious row which saw his local club, Glencull, exiled from all GAA activity because of the kind of common row that flares in all parishes all the time. "The problem was the boy who was sent off with me was allowed to represent his club at handball the following day and I couldn't see how that was fair. I had the unconditional support of the Glencull players so I walked," he said. This was one evening in 2004 in the Kelly Inn, the famous roadside restaurant near his home. "People might say hello if they met in a shop or a pub," he remembered. "But just about."

The row began in 1982 and people on both sides thought they had the moral authority and nobody blinked for almost a decade. Harte and others missed out on a promising football career because of it. One of the chief reasons the feud ended was that they realised in Glencull that they might have something special in their hands in a youngster named Peter Canavan. People began talking and out of that came Errigal Chiaráin and a new era of splendour.

And that experience was important because Mickey Harte said of that period in isolation: "I learned more about life in that period than in any other period of management. It taught me a lot about loyalty and friendship and principle."

And he took those virtues – those family virtues – with him into management. He didn't know then, of course, just how much he would need them. That evening in Kelly's he laughed when he recalled his first minor trials. Michaela went along with him: 240 kids showed up to volunteer their services for the Red Hand. That was the beginning. When he appeared on the Late Late Show a few weeks after Tyrone's 2008 All-Ireland win, he was accompanied by Michaela who noted that in the 17 years since that first trial, she had not missed a championship game. It was not, she pointed out with a smile, the record of a "fair-weather fan".

It was certainly not that. Who can guess at the countless hours the Harte family have spent talking about football in the same house that thousands of people will, over today and tomorrow, visit in such sombre, heartbreaking circumstances? Who can guess the number of happy football journeys the Hartes have made from their home?

Go back to 2003, to Tyrone's first glittering senior year. Inside the Tyrone dressingroom in Croke Park, all is happy bedlam. Mickey Harte is there and his son, Mark, who played on that team. Stephen O'Neill, one of the class of '97 is saying "Paul McGirr will be happy in heaven tonight". Cormac McAnallen is holding court elsewhere. In the middle of the room, Chris Lawn, a veteran of so many bitterly disappointing days in Tyrone colours, stands not quite able to believe that this is happening; that Tyrone are champions of the whole of Ireland. He holds his hands out at this young crew that Mickey Harte has put together and he marvels "Why not? Why not go on?"

They would go on all right, all of them, through extraordinary days that made them feel like they could travel no higher and then through other terrible days that came out of the blue with unaccountable swiftness.

Their best days are safe and untouchable. And through the worst of them, Mickey Harte and his family and all of the young football players that he has guided down the years have behaved with a grace that has been humbling.

And none of that will be forgotten, not for many, many lifetimes.

Let me just say that i am devastated about what has happened. To think of the suffering the Harte family has endured since Monday is incomprehensible. I would like to say that i am sorry for them and their pain. Mickey must have a faith that is beyond the vast majority. To lose such a wonderful woman is just not fair. I give my sympathy to the family and to all who have bore a similiar cross. I don't have nay way of conveying a message to the family so hopefully someone can arrange for all these comments to be forwarded to the county board perhaps.

Time to heal.