Mickey Harte loves fist pumps. He hates ‘foul and abusive language’.
The Tyrone boss believes GAA pundits are hopping on bandwagons with increasing regularity, this summer, and advises his team’s critics to ‘get real’.
Harte’s Tyrone take on Kerry in Sunday’s All-Ireland semi-final and, not for the first time, they have been cast as the bad guys.
Blanket defending, cynical fouls, diving and players abusing opponents are commonplace in today’s GAA. The common denominator, Tyrone’s detractors say, are the Red Hand County.
Tiernan McCann hurling himself to the Croke Park pitch after having his hair ruffled only fuelled the critical flames. Tyrone’s players were said to have indulged in over-the-line sledging against Donegal and, more recently, Monaghan.
Harte, however, has moved to clarify just what he deems acceptable and unacceptable.
He told Sky Sports, ‘I think this whole sledging business has been overplayed. There are lots of people reiterating this like they know exactly what was said and how horrible it was, as if they were present.
‘I was at that match, on the sidelines, and I never heard any insulting comments from anybody.
‘People have taken this sledging to mean almost anything. I don’t see sledging if somebody is energised about the game. You see it in football, you see it in hurling, when the fist pumps come in… That to me is not sledging but it gets interpreted as sledging.
‘Sledging is horrible, abusive language from one person to another person. I would not tolerate that in any shape or form.
‘Some of our guys were accused of that when all they did was do a job they were sent out to do – to man-mark somebody… one day it is described as touch-tight marking, another day it is sledging. People need to get real.’
You can check out the full video here.
