Mickey Harte has been through the worst experience in life, having to bury your child. It feels harsh then to be critical when the seeds of a problem were sown in that part of his personal history but the decision to bar RTÉ from any media access to Tyrone for the All Ireland Football Final does nobody any real service.
Limerick’s win on Sunday would always have been a great one for the people of Limerick but it would have had far less relevance had it not been for the amplification of what they did by the national broadcaster.
It doesn’t have to be RTÉ, the Six Nations Grand Slam showed that TV3 could do just as good a job, but if the main broadcaster, through whom a million people or more get to experience the occasion, does not have the chance to talk to you then your story becomes dimmer for that.
Back in 2011, there was a letter written by Harte and others suggesting to RTÉ that journalist and commentator Brian Carthy should be given more of an outlet for his work.
To be honest it had as much relevance as the media writing to him to suggest that Sean Kavanagh should play at Full Back for the Tyrone team. It was an opinion free to be stated but hardly of any great relevance in a finals decision about deployment.
Harte was upset at the fact that the letter was leaked and this resentment became sharper some months later when an RTÉ programme showed insensitivity in a comedy sketch that was seen to be a personal attack.
He was right to be upset about the latter, wrong about the former but seven years on there has been no move to mend the bridges.
Control of media access has become much more of a tool in teams armory over the years. It has always been a double edged sword being one of those variables in advance of a match that you as a manager cannot fully control. And yet it is the lifeblood of how and why the fans remain so.
We do not have access to the training ground. Neither do we need to be privy to every thought or feeling of the players but in order to like them, we have to get to know them.
Stopping any access means they lose their identity. They remain players but are seen less as people. They are numbers on the pitch, interchangeable with others but without a character known to those outside their own circle.
That’s not fair on the players, the fans or the sport itself. We get to know of Joe Canning, Shane Dowling and Eoin Lynch by what they do with a hurl in hand, but we get to know them through the words they say and the personal story of how they got there.
With Tyrone’s players over the last seven years that has not been possible through the biggest single medium, there is in the world of Gaelic Games.
I have met Mickey Harte on a number of occasions. He is a thoughtful and intelligent man whose breadth of influence can and should be felt far beyond the white lines. He has been in charge of Tyrone for 16 years, an outlier in terms of so much that is modern sport, and all the more interesting for that.
In this though he is wrong to cut off the station that will show his team, his sport to the nation and the world.
We can still read about them in other media but if they win on Sunday week, and if the Player on the Pitch who has made the greatest impact is wearing a white shirt we will have to tune into Sky Sports to hear how he feels, to get the emotion we caught on Sunday last from Shane Dowling, John Kiely and the Limerick team.
It’s not the end of the world but it makes it harder to know and to like the Tyrone players and management, and that’s a shame.
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