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Mickey Harte: 'The idea being trialled is a very positive thing'

Tyrone manager Mickey Harte.

Tyrone manager Mickey Harte.

By Cian O'Connell

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Tyrone manager Mickey Harte is excited by the fact that the format for the All Ireland Senior Football Championship will be altered next year.

Speaking at the Launch of the 18th Annual KN Group All Ireland GAA Golf Challenge, Harte feels it is 'worth experimenting' for a three year period between 2018 and 2020.

"I think something had to change," Harte stated. "I've been an advocate of this for many years now that four qualifiers and the four provincial champions to me wasn't a fair mix for the last eight.

"I had other ways of suggesting how we could get there, but I feel anyway to come to something different is a good thing. Yes there's going to be problems sorting out the logistics of how it fits into club life. I think there's a lot of talk about that people don't care about the clubs, that they speak about caring about the clubs but don't show that they're doing it and that's not true.

"I think that's unfair to the people in headquarters that have to try and deal with everything at their disposal. I think they understand the necessity to be as helpful to clubs as possible but at the same time, this is the shop window of the GAA and this is why the GAA is so popular. You can't dismiss that either.

"I think this will be worth experimenting with and I think maybe when the experiment is done, people will find if there's issues that it doesn't fulfil and therefore while it's going on, people will be assessing if they need to make some adjustments to it. In principle I would be with the whole concept.

"We've been in that place where you've won your provincial championship and two weeks later you're out of the All-Ireland, that's not a nice place to be. That won't happen now. You win your provincial championship and you've three more games. Therefore if you do well in at least two of those, you've a chance of making a semi-final. I think that's a fairer and more level playing field."

Harte is also adamant that the home and away games in the last eight stage will be hugely beneficial too. "Absolutely, I think it would be a magic occasion, magical," Harte says.

Derek McGrath, Austin Gleeson, and Mickey Harte pictured at the Launch of the 18th Annual KN Group GAA Golf Challenge at Croke Park.

Derek McGrath, Austin Gleeson, and Mickey Harte pictured at the Launch of the 18th Annual KN Group GAA Golf Challenge at Croke Park.

"It'll bring some sort of intensity and some sort of colour to places that maybe wouldn't have it otherwise. It's in the real heat of the summer championship.

"There are things there that we can only anticipate how good they can be and I don't think we should write them off before we at least get a chance to see it and I think the good thing about it is, it's being trialled.

"Some people are dismissing that the trial is never there. Some things haven't even got a trial and I think they should have got a trial. So I think the idea being trialled is a very positive thing."

With four teams on seven points in Division One of the Allianz Football League two fascinating rounds remain. "It's really surprising," Harte says about how tight the competition is currently. "I don't think anybody at the start of the season would have predicted that, that you'd have four teams in contention for the two top spots and that we would be tying on seven points.

"It's a strange one and it's unusual, but maybe it's a sign how people are taking the League more seriously now and they want to do well in the League. I think that's making for a very competitive League and Allianz and the GAA can be very happy with that."

Under Harte's watch Tyrone have always taken the League seriously. "Yeah absolutely," Harte replies. "I think maybe the League got harder after we did that in 2003 because we won the League and people didn't seem to care too much about it, some of the bigger teams of that time just didn't see it as that important.

"But the fact that we won it in 03 and then went on to win the All-Ireland, people said maybe there's something to this. I did feel from that time on, it began to get more competitive.

"Dublin are the latest version of that philosophy where they hadn't won the league in so many years and now they've put four together in a row, Cork did the same. It's been a good launching pad for success later. Not necessarily a gimme or a guarantee, but good potential for success."