Gaelic Games: Tyrone manager Mickey Harte, attributed part of his side's success in winning the county's first All-Ireland to their extended National League campaign.  Seán Moran talks to him about some of the key factorsbehind Tyrone's first All-Ireland

Dublin's Burlington hotel was hopping yesterday as throngs of supporters mingled with players in the aftermath of their historic achievement.

Besieged by an impenetrable blanket defence of media, Harte talked about the surprisingly sparing preparations that had produced the best team of the season.

"Training has been about quality rather than quantity, something we'd preached a long time. I think it's great to show that you can get to All-Ireland level training just two nights a week and one game at the weekend.

"The other interesting statistic is that yesterday was our 21st match, and we never played a single challenge in the entire year. I think it's very valuable to be playing in the National League up to the concluding stages."

This is a welcome endorsement for the spring competition which has in recent years suffered from the perception that it is misleadingly different to the demands of championship, or even that success in it militates against a good championship.

Tyrone have won the past two National Football League titles and have now become the first county in six years to achieve the double.

Harte also spoke about the decision to rotate players on Sunday, a tactic forced on him by the ankle injury that greatly inhibited the team's captain and leading forward, Peter Canavan, and a sudden illness that befell centre forward Brian McGuigan.

"Myself and Peter talked about this on Friday," he said. "We knew there wasn't 70 minutes in him and we also knew it was vital that he was there at the beginning and ultimately vital that he was there at the end if at all possible. The psychological value he has to the team is just not quantifiable. We gambled on there being more opportunities and more frees in the early part of the game. It panned out that way.

"Brian took a tummy bug on Friday and was very weak. It was amazing that he was able to play as much as he did. We knew going into the game that he was going to be under pressure and we withdrew him for a while to give him a breather. We had intended to rotate people, and with someone like Stephen O'Neill sitting on the line, that was always a good option."

One of the most impressive aspects of the win was the manner in which Tyrone resisted Armagh in the closing stages. The popular view was that they would have to be clearly ahead going into the final quarter if they were to keep the champions at bay. Tyrone were aware of the specifics of this challenge

"It's always a 73 or 74-minute game these days," said Harte. "We've prepared for that all season. We take the game in small phases, even as small as 30 seconds at a time. But obviously it's a well-known fact that they're a last 15 minutes team and they've built their reputation on that. Therefore we had to be ready to meet that challenge.

"People said that we would need to be so far ahead to be able to cope with that. We didn't particularly feel that. We thought that if we were ahead at all we should challenge them in the last 15 minutes - that should be our chief target. If that's what they build their game around we should challenge them in the best part of their game.

"The last 15 minutes was a button that we would have to press and I think we did that."

There has been much criticism of the style of play adopted by Tyrone this summer and harsh criticisms levelled at the players and the tactics employed.

Harte says that this has been hard to take.

"Hard but maybe it inspired us. If we'd lost playing the prettiest football in the world I know who'd be speaking about that and telling us that we didn't have the whatever for it.

"Now that we have been able to adapt our game to deal with whatever's put in front of us and whatever way it comes at us, that I believe is the stuff of winners."

Looking back at the immensely successful year, his first in charge of the county, the Tyrone manager selects an unusual watershed moment, one of only two competitive defeats suffered by his side. The moment when he felt that the team had the potential to challenge seriously.

"If I say that to you, you mightn't believe me, but I said it the day after we lost to Dublin in Parnell Park. I believed we played well enough to beat Dublin that day with a whole lot of men missing. I knew that when the other players came back that we had the potential to go very far."

Harte now has a full set of All-Irelands, minor, under-21 and senior. He recalls a major influence from the minor days, a terrible accident in which one of his players lost his life after sustaining internal injuries during a minor championship match.

"The progress from underage had a lot to do with the Paul McGirr incident. Paul was one of the minors of '97 and died on the field of play and left a great spirit of hope, if you like, that some day they would deliver major success as some sort recognition of his bringing us through that game."

All year Harte has delivered the same message day after day and match after match. The team was always developing, always trying to improve. He also applies the principle to himself.

"The best that I can do is to try and learn something every day. Like the old adage, you should never go out in the morning and come back in the evening the same person, because you should have learned something that day. I have an open mind and know that there are no finished products in life, that there is only something in the process of being made."