ALMOST three months have passed since Mickey Harte’s shock appointment as Derry manager, and it wasn’t until Wednesday night in Armagh that his self-imposed silence was broken.
That wasn’t by accident.
Knowing media outlets from all over would be at the Dr McKenna Cup launch, especially once word seeped out earlier in the day that Harte was attending, it was an opportunity to get the whole thing dealt with in one go.
No one-to-one interviews since, no recent comments to be cross-referenced, instead the pot had been taken off the boil and allowed to simmer. Harte has seen enough through his years in the game to know how these things work.
Cushendall’s All-Ireland semi-final heartaches
Cushendall hurlers and their All-Ireland semi-final jousts
Among the topics up for discussion was his and Gavin Devlin’s exit from Louth, and how it had been “misrepresented slightly”.
“When myself and Gavin met with [Louth chairman] Peter Fitzpatrick, we shook hands over three years work with Louth, which we completed,” said the former Tyrone boss.
This was a considered response to subsequent dispatches from the ‘Wee County’, with Fitzpatrick having claimed Louth had been preparing for the new campaign before Harte’s departure, having “given an extra programme to the players”.
That was backed up by captain Sam Mulroy, who said there had already been conversations between management and players about next season.
But the big one, at least up here, was the Derry question, and the........