Tyrone, Tyrone: who cannot take some sly delight from the irrepressible talent the Red Hand team has for the getting under the skin of the establishment? Here they come again, down to Dublin from the darklands, with their quiffs and their quibbles, their impetuosity and – believe it – with the necessary arrogance to feel that they can beat the All-Ireland champions.
But moreover, they come armed with their longstanding conviction they are misunderstood by the world in general. And on the sideline stands Mickey Harte, observant and inscrutable and, should Tyrone manufacture an improbable victory in Croke Park tomorrow, on the threshold of his very finest hour.
Some GAA teams and counties are studiously dull. Tyrone are the opposite: since they came with a venomous starburst of attitude and anger and talent in 2003, they have been endlessly fascinating. They won three All-Ireland titles in a stunning six-year period without ever losing their sense of separation and of being outsiders.
That team has broken up but the attitude has carried through to this season. The aftermath of the under-21 final controversy provoked a nationwide tut-tutting and series of stern admonishments from the lectern of punditry on the rights and wrongs.
Tyrone supporters would be entitled to feel their All-Ireland win was overshadowed by the controversy. Then onto the league and, in particular, that dismal day in Ballybofey when Tyrone looked wan and pitiful and boyish as they were flung about the pitch by Donegal.
Harte said the performance was among the worst of any Tyrone team under his watch and the nature of that loss appeared to add substance to the accusation that his teams had lost their edge and that maybe the Ballygawley man had stayed on too long.
Spitting rain
But when Tyrone next materialised in Ballybofey, on an equally bleak day of spitting rain and wind, they came with a different intent. It has gone largely unnoticed that – apart from the trippy thrills of Westmeath v Meath – that opening day encounter between Tyrone and Donegal was probably the best game of the championship to date.
It was as everyone anticipated, in the sense it was puritan in mood and attitude. But the first half was quietly brilliant. Some of the score-taking was excellent. And everyone in the ground that day couldn't take their eyes of it. The obsessive attention which Justin McMahon paid Michael Murphy became a game within the game and the television cameras couldn't capture just how much restraint the Donegal captain showed.
McMahon gave an audacious display in barely legal provocation and elsewhere, the verbal and physical exchanges were in rapid-fire mode. Two days later, Seán Cavanagh made some exceptionally honest observations about the bitter undercurrent of what he termed as a typical “hot-tempered win-at-all-costs Ulster championship type of game”.
It wasn’t the physical scars or bruises that bothered Cavanagh as much as the trading of dark, personal barbs which, he stated, both teams were guilty of. He made the point that when it was over, you had to be able to look at someone in the eye and shake their hand.
It is always interesting watching Harte in the moments when Tyrone lose big games. His expression rarely registers anything. That day, he briefly shook hands with Rory Gallagher, the Donegal manager, did his interviews and left. If Tyrone had lost, then they had at least rediscovered something of the old stubbornness. They disappeared, trained away in Garvaghy and quietly made their way through the qualifying rounds, existing as little more than a persistent rumour.
Then, all of a sudden, they were back in Croke Park, in the last eight and after 70 minutes against Monaghan, they were everywhere and infamous all over again.
The Tiernan McCann/hair ruffle “‘scandal” has become most tiresome subplot of the GAA summer. For sure, McCann was guilty of adding his name to the list of ridiculous and embarrassing incidents in which players react to slight provocation with displays of public histrionics. There is a fairly good chance even as he hit the ground, he knew he had messed up.
In the short term, the dive worked and Monaghan's Darren Hughes was sent off. Hughes was wronged. Only McCann knows if he feels that was worth it. The national mockery that followed will probably do more to convince all other players of the daftness of trying something similar. But McCann was held up for ridicule – and official GAA sanction – in a way that other players were not. Harte defended his player at Tyrone's press conference. This week's decision to rescind the staggering eight-week ban handed to McCann has led to a new bout of sermonising.
World won’t listen
It all brings Tyrone and Mickey Harte back to their first All-Ireland semi-final in six years in perfect circumstances. The world won't listen. They are out there on their own. Something in the demeanour of Tyrone always brings to mind the old line from Saturday Night, Sunday Morning: "I'm me and nobody else. Whatever people say I am, that's what I'm not because they don't have a clue about me." In their best years, Tyrone were sublime but in their best years, they were narky and contrary as well.
They can no longer out-football every other team in the country but they will carry the old insolence with them into Croke Park tomorrow to go along with the best laid plans of Mickey Harte. If the match goes to form, then Kerry will enjoy their first championship win over Tyrone at Croke Park since the final of 1986.
Things are going to have go exceptionally well for the Red Hand tomorrow. To begin with, Harte will have to have worked out how to get through that high-lying Kerry defensive blanket. Even if that works, their remaining alchemists – Seán Cavanagh, Peter Harte and Mattie Donnelly – are going to have play out of their skins.
If Mickey Harte can get his team through this test, it arguably surpasses anything he has done before. Logically, it shouldn’t happen. But Tyrone have a genius for making nonsense of logic. That’s why you will feel that a voltage of edginess shooting through the stadium when they appear in Croke park tomorrow – the last Ulster team standing when all is said and done.
Tyrone. You can crib about them and despair of their ways but few teams can bring the masses to the edge of their seats.
Dreary steeples?
Not on your life.
