Mickey Harte on Derry’s demise: ‘They’re not reaching the levels they did in the league… it’s hard to explain’

An 11-point home loss to Armagh follows a five-point defeat to Galway last time out and a six-point loss to Donegal in Ulster, all in the nine weeks since they were crowned league champions with an extra-time win over Dublin.

“They’re just not reaching the levels they did in the league, and particularly the league final, and it’s very hard to explain what has happened,” said Harte.

“We can only look at it and see what our eyes are telling us, that we’re getting bad beatings,” he added.

Harte acknowledged that their All-Ireland prospects were now at “long odds” and said his team made it easy for Armagh, especially in the opening half when they gifted them easy possession to hit them on the counter for two goals.

“Armagh played with a huge intensity there today, but I think we gifted them the key to the door.

“You might say that comes with the pressure and the intensity they put on, but if you take a closer look at it, we gave away some crucial balls that weren’t really all intensity, it was errors on our part. And it’s very hard to deal with that.

“I find it hard to explain it,” continued Harte. “I can’t explain the difference in the performance of our team. The players are still very good players, and they couldn’t have won Division 1 without being very good players. Suddenly within a couple of months, they’re not playing with the quality we saw from them. We’ll have to just do our best to dig through the debris and try and come out with something better for the next game.”

That next game is against Westmeath at a neutral venue and if they win that they’ll have an away game in a second/third place play off, something that will put the current format under scrutiny.

Harte admitted that if he wasn’t a manager of a Derry team in this position (losing three championship games) he’d likely agree with calls for change.

“I’m sure they will make adjustments if the people that are involved in making those changes decide that it’s not a good thing to lose three games and still stay in, which everybody’s entitled to their opinion. If I wasn’t in this position, I might agree with it too”.

He acknowledged confidence has taken a hammering since the concession of four goals to Donegal six weeks ago.

“Conceding so many goals the way we did knocked the confidence out of them,” he accepted. “I think there were other circumstances that made it difficult for us to get a win in Galway (injuries and Gareth McKinless’ sending off). But I thought, in a game, we’re missing players, obviously, we’re missing a number of starters, but Armagh were missing some as well. So you can’t use that as an excuse. They were missing players but they played with a lot of energy and a lot of drive, regardless of that. It’s very difficult to put your finger on it. All I know is that it’s not reflective of how good these boys are.

Asked whether some of their issues were psychological, Harte suggested it was a combination of different elements dragging them down.

“You can’t play the level of football that our boys played on March 31 and then have your next three performances the way they were. It doesn’t make sense, unless there’s a mental problem there or maybe it’s fatigue, maybe it’s coming off the high of winning the league. It could be loads of things. Injuries play a part in it as well. The end result is not good for us at the minute.”

On the fundamental issue of pushing too many players too high and being caught on the counter when there were interceptions or off kick-outs, Harte said their approach was always under review.

“Obviously, it’s a results-based industry that we’re in here and our results are not good at the minute. So, we have to try and do what we can to get a better outcome in the next match.

“You don’t want to abandon any particular style of play. I think we have to have a mix of different styles of play, and the offensive game, you must be very clinical in your passing when that happens, and we weren’t today.”