Mickey Harte steps down as manager of Derry

Harte has stepped away just eight days after Derry’s exit from the All-Ireland football championship to Kerry at the quarter-final stage.

It had been a troubled championship for Derry with the loss to Donegal in Ulster followed by a calamitous defeat by Armagh in the group stage in Celtic Park last month. They also lost to Galway in Salthill before that and while the performance there wasn’t as bad as the other two, the loss of Gareth McKinless to a red card pointed to disciplinary issues.

Derry were structurally at sea against Armagh but reorganised to hold out against Westmeath in their final group game in Newry and then won a penalty shootout against Mayo Castlebar seven days later.

They were much more defensively compact and carried that into the Kerry game which became a grind that ultimately they weren’t equipped to win.

Despite being league champions, courtesy of a shootout win over Dublin in the final after extra-time, Derry had gone back under Harte from where they were in the previous year’s championship and the mood about his continuation had been mixed.

Harte and his coach Gavin Devlin had uprooted from Louth after three years last September to take the vacant Derry job, seeing it as a more realistic opportunity to win another All-Ireland title.

The vacancy had come after Ciaran Meenagh, the interim manager after Rory Gallagher stepped down from the role, had made it known that he no longer wanted to be considered.

Malachy O’Rourke, Glen’s All-Ireland winning manager earlier this year, did not want to be considered either.

Harte’s departure could possibly clear the way for Gallagher to return now.

Ulster GAA had “temporarily debarred” Gallagher “without prejudice” from the GAA until the Ulster GAA Safeguarding Panel concluded their work which had begun some two months after Gallagher stepped down, just days before the Ulster final win over Armagh, in the wake of a social media post by his estranged wife Nicola alleging domestic abuse.

Gallagher has insisted the allegations have been “investigated and dealt with by the relevant authorities”.

Gallagher took a case to the Disputes Resolution Authority which found in favour of him, ruling that Ulster GAA did not have the power, under rule, to debar him in the manner that they did.

That has freed him to manage and coach once more and it’s understood that there could be some support in the county for that to happen.