By Niall Gartland

HE won an All-Ireland SFC title with Tyrone back in 2021, but Peter Harte admits that any lofty ideas of plotting a similar path at club level sat very much at the back of his mind.

The Errigal Ciaran stalwart pocketed his first Tyrone Senior Championship medal in the relatively early days of his senior career, back in 2012, but he had to wait a full decade to win his second – a time frame perhaps indicative of the notoriously competitive nature of Tyrone Club football.

Asked if Errigal Ciaran’s involvement on the biggest day in the club calendar is the stuff of dreams, Harte acknowledged that an All-Ireland final berth wasn’t exactly his bullseye target at the outset of the season.

“I think people in Tyrone generally don’t think that way – you can’t afford to look past the first round. People in different counties might think that’s a bit silly, but you saw you the first round of the Tyrone Senior Championship this year, it was mad in a way, there was so little between the teams in any of the games.

“In the back of your mind you may hope to go on a run like we’re on now, but the reality of Tyrone and Ulster is that they’re so hard to do well in, and so hard to win, that what we’re doing now is a bit of a dream. It’s hard to take in because we’re right in the middle of things but we’re enjoying every minute of it.”

Harte has soldiered for Errigal Ciaran through thick and thin and is mindful that seasons like these mightn’t come around too often, particularly given the strides that rival clubs are making. In the end though, that sense of heightened competition is good for the overall health of Tyrone football.

“A huge amount of work has gone in this. When I started, Tiffy Quinn was manager, Peter Canavan had us for a number of years, then Ronan McGuckin, Pascal Canavan, Johnny McBride, Adrian O’Donnell and Mark Harte, and now the present management team. You’re building and building and hoping to get the reward of a Tyrone Club Championship and then on a special occasion you might push on in Ulster.

“It does take a lot of effort, and some of the younger boys in their first year or two might think this happens every year, but when you’ve played x amount of years like some of us, you know it takes years and years of hard work.

“You see the talent that is coming through in Tyrone, the Hogan Cups and success at underage level. There’s lots of clubs bringing lads through and Tyrone as a county is benefitting from that. I think that’s why the intrigue of the Tyrone Championship is so high, that there’s great players coming through year after year.”