‘He is as good as another son to me’ – Derry boss Mickey Harte on his long-standing lieutenant Gavin Devlin

Football championship season number 23 for Mickey Harte and everything seems different.

The preparation levels, the body shapes or the schedule, not even the fundamental pillars of the game remain. These days, it is all ball retention and scoring zones, plus ones and even roaming goalkeepers.

But ahead of Saturday’s showdown with Donegal, Harte remains as relevant now as when he stormed the 2003 season to claim Tyrone’s first All-Ireland. There’s been water under the bridge since, in both Tyrone and Louth and now Derry. No one foresaw the architect of the modern Tyrone hopping the Sperrins to try squeeze an All-Ireland from their talented group. But live long enough and all sorts of windows and doors pop open.

But one constant is Harte’s relationship with Gavin ‘Horse’ Devlin. The pair know each other since the winter of 1997 when the Ardboe man pitched up at a minor trial.

“Clubs send you in a hundred nominations and you are looking for 24 players and you get 240 nominations,” Harte recalled. “You have to work on that to reduce it.

“He was on one of these [trial] teams and was playing wing half-back, and this lad was talking and directing operations and telling people where to go. He had never seen them before, but he knew they needed to be doing things he could see.

“When he played for us, he was just such a good reader of the game. Again, he knew his limitations, he hadn’t a big kick of the ball, but of course, he was very fortunate he had Brian McGuigan not far from him all the time. He says, ‘Give the ball to McGuigan. Give the ball to McGuigan’.”

In the early days, Devlin was one of his trusted on-field lieutenants and Harte thought enough of him to reinstate him to the team in the 2003 All-Ireland semi-final after he’d been sent off in a league final against Laois.

“See, at that stage we had a strong relationship. You are talking ’98 minors – this was like through three years of the under-21s and then into the seniors. So, we had built a lot of trust in each other and like I knew his qualities. I knew his value to the team. I didn’t think twice about it. As soon as his suspension was over, he fitted the bill.”

​And when the game moved on and away from Devlin’s strengths, he took himself away from the panel, only to return to Tyrone football as the best coach in the game, according to Harte.

“I [have] never seen anybody as good as him, that’s the truth. What he knows about the game … People think because he played [as a] defender himself, he is kind of the defence man. Absolutely not.

“He is a very creative coach. He sees the game in the total view of the thing and has a passion, obviously. Anybody who would know him would know that he has a passion for Gaelic games and he delivers that and demands high standards of the players.

“He is a great innovator in terms of setting up situations in training, and in the training arena, that translate to the game. It’s not just about training certain drills to do the skills. If they haven’t got relevance to the game, they are not going to be as beneficial as they would be otherwise.

“So that’s a great skill to have and a great overview of the game. He reminds me of these top-class snooker players, not looking at the immediate, looking at three shots down the line,” he added.

Harte had no reservations about jumping in to work with Derry but accepted that it might be different for Devlin, who hails from hard on the Derry border. Was there any trepidation when he broached the subject of joining the Oak Leaf?

“Obviously, him and his proximity to the Derry border, as you know, the nearer you are to somebody, the bigger the rivalry. Of course, he has a couple of lads who are good footballers, too, and they would be making strides with Tyrone at the U-20s there at the minute. So, that was something he’d have to consider as well. He has just been very loyal to me over time. Over the years, he has been very loyal and I have always said he is as good as another son to me.”

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