SUCCESS IS a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome. That's a widely-used quote which right now could come from the mouth of either Mickey Harte or Jason Ryan.

Harte has always viewed the championship as a sort of journey, as in the never-ending type. Taking Tyrone to a third All-Ireland final in six years still feels like the one journey. So when Harte took a seat in the press conference suite of Croke Park the first question, almost inevitably, was how this journey to an All-Ireland final compared to the others.

"It's very satisfying to be back in an All-Ireland final," he started. "Tyrone have not been in that many in the history of the GAA, people forget that, and I suppose we have had a good run in recent times, but '05, when we were last there, has faded into the distant memory.

"It is a hard place to get back to, a final, and it's very satisfying that we are there again. We are not setting the world on fire. We are playing some nice football and some ordinary football and getting the right results at this time."

Harte was typically accepting of the criticism that his team had nearly surrendered the sort of advantage that should have made the entire afternoon plain sailing:

"No team dominates a match for 70 minutes and the other team will always get 10 or 15 minutes, when they will attack you, and thankfully when they cut our lead to three points there in the second half we were able to get ourselves focused again and opened up the gap that bit further again."

When wing back and man-of-the-match Philip Jordan took a seat the thoughts had already shifted to the meeting with Kerry on September 21st.

"Just because we have beaten Kerry a couple of times will mean nothing when we meet them in three weeks' time and it certainly will not be of any advantage to us. We know that Kerry will be a lot tougher opposition ("I presume they won the first game, did they?" he asked, to much laughter) and I doubt if we will be able to afford those lapses in concentration which we suffered out there in the second half.

"But things like that give us something to work on for the next day. I know that we have had a few problems since '05 and lost some big players, like Peter Canavan, and some people said that we were not capable of getting back here for another final but we have done it with real hard work.

"But there is no point in getting to the final if we end up losing it. We have seen that happen to a number of teams at the hands of Kerry, like Mayo, and thankfully we have done it in the final on the two occasions and while it's great to be coming back for another final we have to win it or it will mean very little."

Concerning his own game, including his three-point contribution, Jordan said: "The way that we play it, everyone is entitled to go forward and take their chance and our manager never objects if we do that, once there is someone else covering back. I got a couple and Davy (Harte) got one as well.

"I think that shows what we are about, a team, and no one position counts. We play it as we see it on the day. Now in the final people are going to be saying that we will have the incentive to stop them from getting another title. Many of us have won two medals, but we would also like a third."

Jason Ryan inevitably focused on the journey, not just the destination. "It's been a long summer season with some ups and downs but I know that these players want to work together again for the future," he said. No one had to ask Ryan if he was staying on. At just 31 his management career hasn't even started.

"We went down fighting," he added, "and I know that everyone in the squad will learn a lot from this experience. Our under-21 team got to the Leinster final and our minors did well too and so I would expect that our squad will be stronger as a result come next year."

Ryan made no excuses, no apologies, and had no regrets. Wexford had made the football journey of the summer.