‘Out of something terrible, positive things are happening’

In the early years of the summer camps, Harte often found the visits difficult. Now, he mainly feels pride, especially since they have been able to preserve Michaela’s energy and spirit as part of her legacy. “You still have all kinds of emotions but the emotions are more positive now,” he says. “You realise that out of something terrible, something very good and positive is happening. It’s a great feeling to see young girls feeling good about themselves. It’s about enjoying life and still being well grounded. Maybe the best way to stay grounded is to stay close to God, to have that faith that will sustain you.”

Harte’s faith was always strong but it has sustained him more than ever in the six-and-a-half years since Michaela was murdered in Mauritius. “I feel close to Michaela all the time,” he says. “Maybe I’m blessed in that the pain of the loss is not as acute now but I have this sense of connection that you can’t really explain to anybody. You just know that it exists for me.

“It doesn’t necessarily exist for everyone in my family to that extent because we are all different. But I feel blessed that Michaela lived and that I had that experience with her for 27 years. And I now feel that that experience carries on in a different domain, where there’s a spiritual presence that I feel close to.”

Harte feels that spiritual connection everywhere. When he and his players began saying the Rosary together two hours before every championship match last summer, the idea was inspired by a series of personal events. A lady came to Harte and said she had a dream, in which Michaela told her to tell the players to start saying the Rosary. A couple of days later, a priest called to Harte and handed him 36 Rosary beads, which matched the number of players on the Tyrone panel.

To Harte, it was a clear spiritual sign. “You either believe in a higher power or you don’t,” says Harte. “If people don’t, they dismiss that kind of potential connection. I certainly don’t dismiss it. I take it for what I believe it to be. I have an open mind about all of this. I can’t validate it but what that lady suggested certainly won’t do us any harm anyway.”

Harte has always had an unwavering conviction in everything he has done, especially as a football manager. He is in his 15th season now but Harte’s unbroken presence in Tyrone football stretches back from his time with county minor and under-21 sides began in 1991.

Harte has been the emblem of Tyrone football for three decades but last September the county board turned down his request for a one-year extension to his current two-year term, which concludes at the end of this season. “I suggested what I felt was the right thing to do and that wasn’t taken up,” says Harte. “It was just the whole idea of some continuity in the interests of developing this team. To me, that would have been the right way of doing it but I have to accept the decision.

“It is what it is but I’m not thinking each day, ‘Is this my last game? I am doing this because I enjoy it. I’m working hard at it. So are the players and everyone working with me. We’re only thinking about the present, because that’s all any of us have in life anyway. We don’t have a future. Our past is history. I live in the now and try and operate in that domain.”

Tyrone won a first Ulster title in six years last July but the heat came on after they lost an All-Ireland quarter-final to Mayo by one point. It was further dialled up during the spring when Tyrone lost their last three league games. Joe Brolly claimed that a Tyrone player told him privately that training was “depressing”. Brolly said that a “psychology of fear” was gripping the team. “Tyrone are deteriorating very quickly and morale is deteriorating very quickly,” said Brolly. “They’re stagnant and you can see that the whole experiment’s coming off the rails now.”

Tyrone are now considered serious All-Ireland contenders. “Saying something with conviction doesn’t necessarily mean that its true,” says Harte. “It’s fiction portrayed as reality, and I understand that. It doesn’t bother me or our players but very often, there is zero substance behind that bland argument of us being too defensive, that we can’t win big games. I deal in reality. Not fiction.”

Tyrone have been explosive this summer. Derry and Donegal were poor but Tyrone still hit an aggregate of 1-43. “A lot of people have been playing up on this theory that we don’t have a marquee forward, that we are too defensive,” says Harte. “I didn’t agree with that at all. Performance wise, we were solid against Mayo last year. We were never overrun. We just didn’t take our chances. We were wayward in our finishing. It hurt us but, psychologically, it wasn’t as bad a defeat as some people had suggested.”

Bigger challenges lie ahead but Tyrone are still developing, still evolving. Hammering Donegal was a statement, especially when serial defeat to Donegal had been a black stain on Tyrone’s collective soul and on their modern history. Last year’s Ulster final win was Harte’s sweetest as Tyrone manager but just as in the darkest days of defeat, Harte stayed true to what he always believes; the game is always about more than the final score. “It wasn’t just about the Ulster title, it was about stemming the tide of those Donegal defeats,” he says. “People thought Donegal were far superior but I never felt that. It only made me strive to be better.”

One of the defining images after that final was of Harte celebrating with his young grandson Michael. He has four grandchildren now; Liam, Michael, Aidan and Mary. “I always looked forward anyway to having grandchildren, that God would bless us that way,” says Harte. “It is a real blessing to have this new life that we can look forward to and really enjoy. And it has been good for us since Michaela has died in that it gives us something really positive to focus on.”

Life will never be the same again but Harte has had to deal with a litany of tragedy throughout his time with Tyrone, from the deaths of Paul McGirr and Cormac McAnallen to his own family’s unspeakable heartbreak. And yet despite all the suffering, even through the nightmarish trial in Mauritius, which ended with nobody being found guilty of killing Michaela McAreavey, Harte has always shown remarkable dignity and grace. He even somehow always found it within himself to find the words to try and help and console others afflicted by tragedy.

Despite the pain and the strain, the great coach in Harte always remained at his core. Football has a different perspective now but life’s harsh lessons haven’t diluted his purpose and determination to build another Tyrone team to achieve something eternal once more.

“There are life and death issues and football is not one of them,” says Harte. “But that does not say it’s not important to many people and I wouldn’t diminish that. I have a different perspective but I would never let that take away from the competitive edge that I have in wanting to do the best we can. So I’m still as determined as ever to try and be the best.”

“I get great satisfaction out of building a successful team, at any level. That’s why I’m in the business of managing teams. I’m in that process at the minute of trying to build the next generation of very successful senior footballers in this county. That is a work in progress. We are doing very well but we’re a long way from the end game. It’s not how often you get knocked down but how fast you get up again. And we have had to get up a lot of times in the last few years.”

Nobody has had to do so more than Harte. Still going. Still searching. Still believing. Always.