PETER Harte and Mattie Donnelly have been ruled out of Saturday’s Ulster Senior Football Championship opener against Fermanagh at Brewster Park.
2021 Allstar Harte had his appendix removed a fortnight ago and will sit out the Enniskillen clash while Trillick clubman Donnelly has been hampered by a hamstring injury all season and wasn’t able to play a full game during the League.
Donnelly started just one game, the second round loss to Armagh at the Athletic Grounds, and was withdrawn at half-time. He featured as a substitute on three other occasions but the last of those, against Kerry in Killarney, lasted just nine minutes.
Meanwhile, Harte’s League was disrupted by suspension but he featured in the other five games of the Red Hands’ Division One campaign. The versatile Errigal Ciaran star registered three points in an outstanding individual performance against Mayo and another score as Tyrone ended a 19-year wait for a win over Kerry in Killarney in the final round of games.
After a sluggish start to the League, Tyrone improved steadily as the weeks went by and signing off with victories over eventual Division One final pairing Mayo and the Kingdom was a timely boost to morale says manager Feargal Logan.
“Yes it was good to finish the League with two good wins, although you could say that Kerry were getting ready for a League final in the last game,” said joint-manager Logan.
“But the League is over now and we’re right back into the Ulster Championship and Brewster Park is always a difficult place to go. It’s not that long ago (2018) that Fermanagh were in an Ulster final so we know the quality that is in their team and we know that we’ll have to be at our best on Saturday evening.”
Harte, Donnelly and fellow All-Ireland winners Conor Meyler, Niall Sludden and Ben McDonnell have all come off the conveyor belt of talent at Omagh CBS. Fermanagh manager Kieran Donnelly is the coach of the school’s MacRory Cup team and Logan expects Donnelly to have his side well-prepared for Saturday evening’s provincial opener.
In his first season at inter-county level, Donnelly guided the Ernemen to a mid-table finish in Division Three. Fermanagh were the only county to finish with a zero points difference after scoring 91 points and conceding the same total. Wins against Laois and Longford in rounds three and four of the League briefly sparked hopes of a promotion push but Donnelly’s men lost momentum after losing to Divisional champions Louth and took just a point from their last two games.
As reigning All-Ireland champions and with that victory in Killarney fresh in their memory, Tyrone will go into the game as overwhelming favourites. However, with Harte and Donnelly unavailable and a handful of the players who helped his side win the Sam Maguire last year now retired, Logan knows his Red Hands will face determined resistance on Saturday.
“You can take nothing for granted in the Ulster Championship,” he said.
“It’s all on the day, it’s all about how you perform and we know that Fermanagh, on their home turf, will put it up to us so we have to be ready for that challenge and hopefully we can come away with a good result.”
