Mickey Harte’s tenure as Derry manager certainly hasn’t been easy as his side overcame Mayo to once again return to Croke Park for the All-Ireland quarter-finals.
Amazingly, a team that's lost three Championship games is only two wins from an All-Ireland.
The victory tonight wasn't always pretty but Derry showed their resolve, and again proved they are the best team in the country at penalties.
Speaking to GAA Go after the game, Harte was quick to quieten down the rumours of turmoil in the camp with in house fighting crazy talk in his eyes and whatever the result is next week to back the county going forward into the future,
“We asked them for real passion in their play,” Harte said.
They have been accused of many things and got bad press because of the Championship matches we lost, and there were questions about their character and rumours of in-house fighting and all sorts of things, which was just bonkers. They had to do something to erase that. It doesn’t do that completely.
The people that want to talk like that will talk like that anyway. They will wait until the day that you don’t win and come up with the same stuff, but I think it’s a credit to them that they bore the brunt of that sort of loose talk and came back there today to show they're not that easily beaten and that there still in the fight into the last eight, which is great.
I would say to enjoy the night, being from Derry, and identify what your players did today. Unfortunately, that can only last for six to seven days, so enjoy the moment. Help them the next time they are out, and give them their wholehearted backing because they deserve it. They went through some effort tonight. There have been injuries and all sorts of things mitigating against us being at our best, but tonight, we transformed our play from the three previous championship games, not counting the Westmeath game.
Despite winning 4-3 on penalties, the three-time All-Ireland winning manager wants the spot kicks removed from the game and doesn’t believe it’s the right way to determine the game's outcome.
“It’s probably not a good way to win with the teams involved because there's such a difference. There’s only one kick in it, which could make it a winner or loser, and Mayo didn’t deserve to go out that way. They put up a serious battle today. It was a great ding-dong match, even into extra time,” Harte said.
I think penalties won't be the way in the future to solve these problems of finishing games like this, and I think that would be fair in the long run. Look it. It could have gone either way.
Mayo could have won it in normal time. We probably had the slip-in extra time. Still, it was one of those games where it was a toss of a coin of who would be ahead when it mattered most, and our experience of taking penalties in Dublin in the National League Final stood out to us. There, the confidence was as the same players took them last time. They were confident enough to do it today as well"
Once the adrenaline dissipates from this evening, Derry will face a dose of reality. They'll have a week to recover and one of Dublin, Kerry or Donegal awaiting them. It doesn't get any easier.
