Mickey Harte is hoping it will be case of third time lucky when his Tyrone team lock horns with champions Donegal at Ballybofey on Sunday.

Tyrone have finished second best to Jim McGuinness' team in their last two championship encounters so the long-serving manager reckons is pay-back time.

"We owe anyone who beats us, that's the bottom line," Harte outlined to Gaelic News. "In the last two Championship encounters with Donegal we have come out on the wrong end of the result, so we owe it to ourselves to be better than we have been.

"We want to be contesting for provincial titles and there is something special about Ulster Championship football. We want to be out on those big Sunday afternoons competing for the Ulster title. We haven't been good enough over the last two years.

"I suppose it will come down to our ability to break down their rearguard. They are very good at defending their own goals and breaking out and getting scores. They have developed their game since 2011 from what some people felt was being ultra-defensive to in 2012 a much bigger emphasis on attack.

"I have no doubts they will bring some other new initiative to the game this time around as well. We have to handle and deal with what we know they are good at and then we will be ready for something different.

"Then we have to produce something of our own to give them something to think about. We have to try and play to a high standard like we have been trying to do all year. If we can do that then it will be some game.

"I think it's something that they will be very aware of. There's a great possibility that if we pick up frees in that zone Niall Morgan will be very capable of scoring a number of them, if he is as prolific as he was at Croke Park with five out of six converted.

"He doesn't drag his feet getting up there, obviously it's a fact that it takes a bit of time. However is there ever a measure timewise put on any of these kicks? I think people will know if a player is making a genuine effort to get up to the ball as quickly as possible and for the likes of 45s there is a time lapse anyway as the ball has to be retrieved from behind the goals, no matter who is kicking it.

"It's great to be involved in something that is being recognised as a big, big game, similar to that first round meeting if you go back in time between Derry and Down in 1994. It's great that such attention is being drawn on a game in the Ulster championship.

"We are right to talk up our Championship and Gaelic football as a whole. To have a first round game that the whole country is talking about shows how competitive our province is." Tweet

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