‘Why should anybody have the God-given right to see all games on television?’
Six days out from his 16th All-Ireland semi-final and Mickey Harte sits down in front of the press at the Tyrone Garvaghy Complex, uncompromising and unyielding as ever.
In his 17th season as senior manager, with a couple at U21 and eight years as the minor manager, you can be certain that conviction is among his stronger qualities.
So it was when something of a harmless question is lobbed his way about the irony of RTÉ’s assembled pundits proclaiming the need for games such as Mayo and Donegal to be ‘free-to-air.’
The depth of feeling that Harte reserves for RTÉ on such occasion comes through.
“It does seem a bit strange alright,” he begins. “You would think they must have some kind of vested interest alright and ask those people who would know to give the right answers to what they’re thinking, yeah, it would be easy enough to expect what you’d hear.”
For the record, he’s not against the GAA doing business with whoever of their choosing when it comes to broadcasting rights.
“Look, the GAA deal with who they want to deal with in terms of who they give the rights of their games to.
“I have to suggest that the introduction of Sky to the promotion and presentation of Gaelic games has helped what we’re looking at. There were no graphics much until Sky brought them in — did they not exist of the last 10 or 15 years? I think they did. I think that’s an advantage of them.
We’re getting more insightful analysis, all sorts of diagrams and arrows and highlighting that didn’t happen before, so there’s something good in what’s going on there.
And then, a salty finish for those that have used the emotive argument of people in hospital beds, nursing homes and hospices who are unable to see the occasional game: “I never seen so many people so interested in people in homes and other places around the country that can’t see television. It seems strange that these people suddenly have such a grá for these kinds of people.
“Why should anybody have the God-given right to see all games on television? That was never the case back in the day and we all survived.”
The combative style did not desert him either when assessing where they are at with Peter Harte.
His nephew and playmaker was issued with a one-game suspension for their Super 8s opener against Roscommon after accruing black cards against Donegal, Longford, and Cavan.
He was cleared of just one of those — the one against Longford — meaning he could conceivably lose out on an All-Ireland final if he is black carded during a win over Kerry.
“Why was this brought in? It was brought in by a rant, over Sean Cavanagh. And that was a very clear and deliberate, intended pull down. And so, do any of the things that Petey Harte done, remotely resemble that? Why would he want to do that after 10 minutes of the Donegal game?
“Not a chance. To lose a player for an entire game over one clumsy or ill-timed tackle, you could easily say if he meant to do that and nothing else, I think that’s really difficult to determine. So something different needs to happen, it is ridiculous some of the things that are going on.”
