By Cathal Dervan

Mickey Harte seems like a nice man. Anytime he speaks he always has something interesting to say, anytime I’ve seen him in front of an audience he has managed to hold the crowd with a mixture of intelligence, sense and wit.

Of course that’s the public face of Mickey Harte, the face we get to see post-match at Croke Park when the RTE cameras are shoved in his face.

That’s the Mickey Harte who went up to collect the Philips Manager of the Year award at a star studded lunch in the Berkeley Court Hotel last Thursday.

He looks and he sounds like a nice man, like the sort of man you’d want to take charge of your local football team, like a man you’d like to make responsible for your county’s sporting dreams.

The reason I have got to see the public Mickey Harte is of course a simple one — it’s only because the private Mickey Harte is one of the most successful coaches in the modern history of the GAA.

Whatever it is he does or whatever it is he preaches in the privacy of the Tyrone dressingroom, it clearly works.

It worked two years ago when Tyrone were the best team in the land and it worked again this summer when they swept all before them on an epic journey to a second Sam Maguire.

Tactically Harte seems to have that something extra that sets out the great coaches from the good ones, but I also have a sneaky feeling that Mickey has something special when it comes to inspiration.

He hints at such a talent every time he talks in public, as he did in the Berkeley Court last week when his talents and those of his players were recognized on a national stage once again.

Harte used the occasion to forewarn us all of another Tyrone assault on the All-Ireland title next summer. And he was quick on the mark when Minister for Sport John O' Donoghue reminded him how far Tyrone lag behind Kerry in the list of All-Ireland titles.

“If we win one more next year and the year after we’ll have as many as Kerry have managed in the past 20 years,” quipped Harte as his audience lapped it up.

He did go on to say that it will take a mammoth effort from Tyrone if they are going to become the first county to win back to back All-Irelands in 15 years, but with a man like Mickey Harte at the helm don’t be surprised if the Ulstermen do just that.