Mark Harte may have spent 17 years teaching in Armagh but managing in the Orchard County with Madden has still been a different experience for him.
Last year was one of much change for him. Work-wise, he moved on from that long-term role at St Patrick’s Grammar in Armagh to become Language Support Officer for Irish at Queen’s University, Belfast.
On the football front, he departed his home club Errigal Ciaran, having led them to the Tyrone title in 2022 but lost last year’s final to Trillick.
Madden came calling, after reaching the last four in the Armagh SFC last year before losing out to eventual champions Crossmaglen Rangers.
Harte, along with his club-mate and long-time joint-manager Adrian O’Donnell, has led them back into the semi-finals, after topping their group then seeing off Mullaghbawn in the quarter-finals.
Harte has been around, including in Fermanagh with Roslea, Derry with Ballinderry, and Down with Clonduff, always in conjunction with O’Donnell, but now they have had to adjust to the Armagh scene.
He hasn’t quite had to learn another language in Armagh football, but he definitely found it different from the outset.
Although Tyrone is famed for retaining knockout football in its championship, while Armagh has group stages, Harte found the league format in the Orchard County more hard-fought:
“It’s seriously competitive. The nature of the league is it’s eight teams – where I’m from in Tyrone it’s 16 and it tends to split naturally. Here, playing each other twice, there’s a lot of familiarity, all the teams know each other inside-out.
“That took a lot of getting used to, the intensity of the double fixtures. You play most of your games without your county men, but you play the cards you’re dealt.
“Ultimately the league was about preparation for the championship; it was solid for us and we kick on.”
Having commented on repeating meetings, Madden will actually come up against fresh foes in the semi-final in the form of Clan na Gael, last year’s losing finalists, who were in Division 1B while Madden were in 1A. After meeting Clann Eireann in their championship group, Madden couldn’t meet them, but could have faced Crossmaglen again.
Harte is aware that Madden are probably the team others would have preferred to meet: “Aye, there’s probably an element of that all right. The names are still there in terms of the ‘Who’s who’ of Armagh club football for decades now.”
Yet he’s been impressed by the efforts of the Madden men, saying: “These boys are an honest, humble group. They’re hard-working, they keep turning up every session, we keep asking more and more of them and they keep delivering.
“We’ll prepare the best we can knowing that it’s a big ask the next day out – but it’s a good problem to have.”
Mullaghbawn topped the table in Division 1B and knocked Maghery out of the Championship, but were second best to Madden in the Athletic Grounds on Sunday.
A strong second half took Madden to a seven-point win, 0-17 to 1-7, but Harte still wants better shooting when the semi-final comes around:
“We dropped a couple short and we had four wides in the first half – and they weren’t wides that were from big areas, they were scores we should have got.
“The first half the radar wasn’t working, but we tidied that aspect of our game up in the second half. We have a lot to work on, particularly our first half performance, but it’s a good problem to have.”