Mickey Harte concedes that Tyrone had too many players past their best when losing to Kerry in 2012.

The Kingdom dumped Harte's team out of the championship at the Qualifier stage in Killarney three years ago, gaining some measure of revenge for high-profile defeats in the latter stages of the 2003, '05 and '08 All-Ireland championships.

As the teams prepare to meet again on Sunday, Harte reflects on that sobering loss:

"It was one of those landmark times," the Red Hands' greatest-ever manager states in The Irish Examiner. "There were a few other times as well that we shipped a bit of a beating that wouldn't have been par for the course in the previous eight or ten years. We have had to learn from some hurtful defeats and obviously our league defeat to Kerry in Killarney [in 2014] wasn't pleasant either.

"It's not easy to play the modern game with men in their 30s, in numbers. You can handle a few of them, but you can't have the majority of them. Maybe it took that little bit of time for us to have just a few in that category and others who have the potential to go for 70 minutes in an intense game."

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