Harte calls for an end to the negative stereotyping of Gaelic football

POOR CROWDS. Boring football. Too many frees. Lack of discipline. Mickey Harte is tired of Gaelic football being crippled by these negative vibes, says it’s time to start preaching about strengths and not weaknesses.

Tyrone’s three-time All-Ireland- winning manager was in Croke Park to drum up interest in Sunday’s Division Two final against Kildare, yet soon launched into a passionate broadside against critics of the game, including new GAA president Liam O’Neill.

“We need to get on with the business of being more positive in promoting what we have to offer,” said Harte, “instead of bringing it down and talking it down. I don’t know of any other organisation that does this, in business or sport or anywhere else, that decry their own product.

“We should be aiding our own products. I’m a football man only, but all the products we have are good for the people to see, to enjoy, to be involved in. And we should have lots more people at them, if we market them right.”

At his inaugural presidential speech to Congress earlier this month, O’Neill decried “the defensiveness of the game at the moment” and that the overuse of the hand pass is making football “boring”. But Harte suggested O’Neill was himself being crippled by the negative vibes.

“It doesn’t surprise me,” he said, “because if people keep saying something often enough then certain people start to believe it. Maybe there aren’t enough of us shouting back the other way. If you don’t question things that are not right, then people will accept it as truth. And it’s not the truth.

“Has the game as much to offer as it ever had? In fact, has it more to offer? And I’d say yes it has. Like, I just cannot understand why so many people have been blighted by Donegal-Dublin last year, as if it was a total reflection on all that Gaelic football has to offer.

“In the totality of what went on even last season it had minimal bearing on the overall outcome.

“There are lots of very, very attractive games played, lots of very attack-minded teams out there, and teams do want to score, do want to entertain.

“But they’ll entertain in a way that is relevant in today’s game. And we shouldn’t be harking back to this catch and kick mentality, which really bores me to tears. Go take a look at the TG4 Gold series, and it’s not that exciting. It was the best there was at that time, and I’ve always acknowledged that, and I enjoyed it.

“Now we have something of a different era, that I find equally exciting. And we hear people decrying it and demeaning it from all parts. Let’s be real about it.”

O’Neill’s suggestion that Gaelic football also needed to clean up its disciplinary act fairly enraged Harte too. “Of course there will be indiscipline. There’s always has been a degree of indiscipline. But in fact if you go back again to the same era that we’ve been speaking about, as somebody said, some of the things that went on then would be grievous bodily harm now. It wouldn’t be a foul at all then.

“But nobody got up on their high horse and said this game is in disrepair at that stage. They accepted certain things went on, tried to eradicate them over time, which I think largely has happened . . .

“And does it have to be compared with hurling? In hurling the frees don’t happen just, there’s a different mentality in refereeing hurling. Hurlers can walk into each other, walk over each other, do all sorts of things, in the spirit of the game, and there’s not as much blowing. So because there’s more fouls blown doesn’t mean there is more fouls in football . . . .”

Even the attendance issue, Harte said, was being twisted into negative terms.

“When people say there’s “only” 12,000 or 13,000, why didn’t they say there’s 12,000 or 13,000? Why not go about marketing it to see can we get more to it?

“And I don’t care how many are out here, when there’s a game in Croke Park, every player that ever played football would want to play out there. I think they’d rather play there in front of 12,000 in Croke Park than play in front of 30,000 in some provincial ground.”