Mickey Harte still standing in Derry despite rumours flying on social media

A good player heave requires a good pastry. And while the incessant WhatsApp messages couldn’t shed light on whether the players opted for cinnamon rolls over coconut protein balls, the dispatches were unequivocal: Mickey Harte was toast in Derry.

The kneading of the dough was clearly agreeable for those who might not necessarily know what they needed, but who were happy enough to put forward a take on events they wanted. Proofing the dough is an altogether trickier matter, though.

Tuesday night provided the latest very contemporary GAA controversy, played out through the vehicle of forwarded WhatsApp messages – a match was struck off the side of a smartphone and up she went, it doesn’t take much tinder to set social media alight. Swipe right, swipe left, forward.

It raged brightly and rapidly and spread uncontrollably for a couple of hours. And then the flame flickered out.

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The central theme within the tangle of messages: Mickey Harte was gone, though nobody quite seemed to know where to.

At one stage you were left to imagine there were streams of cars racing from all corners of Derry to a hastily arranged emergency county board meeting in Owenbeg – there weren’t, because there wasn’t one. A scheduled Executive committee meeting of the board, held on the first Tuesday of every month, took place.

There were messages about the training camp in Portugal, messages about players meeting in a cafe to discuss management, messages about tactics, messages about messages, screengrabs of screengrabs. It was a stream of mostly idle rumours and balderdash, embellished half-truths and barstool gossip.

[ Darragh Ó Sé: Derry look loose, cranky and disorganised - the situation seems to be beyond fixing ]

The whole saga reached its peak during the middle of Ireland’s friendly against Hungary at the Aviva – an indication that perhaps folk were just bored more than anything else – but by the time Troy Parrott had scored the winner, the tweeting had lost its fervour.

Harte’s spell in Derry was always going to be determined by results – and after three consecutive championship defeats there is no doubt the mood has certainly turned. And it appears decisively so.

But the Tyrone native will be in charge for their crucial round-robin match against Westmeath on Saturday week.

It is believed video work was conducted by Harte and Gavin Devlin on Tuesday night ahead of that Westmeath fixture. It would be a shock if Harte did not see out the season, but beyond that who knows.

Failure to beat Westmeath (a draw would be enough for the Lake County to finish third in the group) would be the end of the line for him in Derry.

But Derry’s future beyond the group stages doesn’t look particularly appetising for Harte either.

Indeed, the GAA gods could yet conspire to produce an uncomfortable showdown – because one of the possible outcomes ahead for Derry is a preliminary quarter-final against Tyrone, in Omagh.

Another scenario leads to a preliminary quarter-final against Louth, the county Harte left in haste last September to take charge of Derry.

There is also the potential to meet Donegal in Ballybofey or a trip to face Mayo in Castlebar or Dublin at Croke Park, though Harte would probably favour any of those over standing on the sideline at Healy Park for a knockout championship match.

It was always going to be a test for Harte to bring Derry supporters with him, but the league triumph bought him time and space. Both have now disappeared.

The nature of Derry’s recent defeats – their high press getting exposed and punished through turnovers and overlaps – has led to a very public debate on Harte’s reign.

That discussion spilled over on social media last Tuesday night to such an extent that we wouldn’t have been surprised to flick over to Sky Sports and find Gary Neville, Roy Keane, Jamie Carragher et al picking apart Derry’s game plan on the latest episode of The Overlap.

It appears Harte is already on borrowed time. Winning Sam Maguire would help, but that possibility looks less based in reality right now than at any point in recent years.

This is the in-between place, the void between Derry’s third straight championship defeat and speculation over what happens when they next take to the field. There’s room for a lot of noise in such a vacuum.

In the tunnel beneath the main stand at Breffni Park last January, Harte spoke to reporters after managing Derry for the very first time – a McKenna Cup win over Cavan.

“We are looking to add value, a team that has won back-to-back Ulsters are a decent team and they are at a high level, we want to see if we can bring them to a level beyond that because I think that is where they want to go,” said Harte.

“They want to go to a level beyond Ulster and we want to try and do what we can to show them that is possible.”

Standing against the wall of the Derry dressingroom at Celtic Park last Sunday, Harte cut a shell-shocked figure.

“I find it hard to explain,” he offered. “We’re not in a good place, and there’s no way of sugar-coating it. We’re in a very bad place at the minute.”

Harte will lead Derry to Newry on Saturday week but it feels like the long goodbye. Perhaps it was always destined to play out this way at some point – though could anybody really have seen it coming so spectacularly undone nine weeks ago? The dam has given way.

One of the last songs played over the PA system as the players made their way off the pitch in Cavan six months ago was Bagatelle’s Summer in Dublin. In the depths of January, it felt a long way off then.

And a summer in Dublin doesn’t appear a whole pile closer for Derry now.

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