Jack O'Connor's Column:Both Kerry and Dublin will be quietly glad to see the back of Mickey Harte's Tyrone

Given their respective records against Mickey Harte's boys, both Kerry and Dublin will have been quietly glad to have seen the back of Tyrone on Saturday.

It's been a surprising summer. You would have got fair odds at the start of the year on there being two Ulster teams still in the championship at the start of August and neither of them being Tyrone or Armagh. On the surface at least, there is a changing of the guard in Ulster. Both Derry and Monaghan have improved and the once great teams that Armagh and Tyrone sent out have been dragged back into the pack.

I'm not sure that it's time to write either county off for good though. The rash of injuries suffered by both teams this year was of biblical proportions. Key players who made both Armagh and Tyrone tick have been in for repairs. In Armagh's case, Ronan Clarke's ball-winning ability at full forward has been central to the way they played the game. Without him Steven McDonnell just wasn't the same man. And they missed the inspirational presence of Francie Bellew at full back.

After they beat us in the 2005 All-Ireland final, I said that Tyrone had four forwards who would get into any team of the past decade. Brian McGuigan, Brian Dooher, Stephen O'Neill and Peter Canavan. You could more or less say that they were without all four on Sunday.

Forwards like that are irreplaceable. McGuigan made Tyrone the machine they were. An injury-free O'Neill is still a truly great player. Dooher in his prime did the work of two men. Canavan called it a day two years ago and when he went he didn't just leave with his bag of tricks. His protege, Owen Mulligan, hasn't been the same player since his old muinteoir scoile in Cookstown vanished.

Under those circumstances it says a lot about Tyrone's resolve and work ethic that they still pushed Meath all the way on Saturday. Tyrone lost but still they gave a fine account of themselves. They stayed in the game. They kicked 11 wides in the second half. Despite their depleted resources they were a team still managing to get the best out of themselves even when playing a fresh side with a lot of momentum.

(One other significant factor that is coming against Tyrone at the moment is that they are now being whistled for some of the tackles that have been their trademark. There is a discernible shift in emphasis by the referees and this has decommissioned another of Tyrone's great weapons. On Saturday several marginal decisions went against them.)

Meath will be thrilled with how they have regrouped and got better since the Dublin defeat. The qualifiers have never exactly been their cup of tea but there is a bit of romance about their adventure this year. Traditionalists will love them because they stand for a lot of what is good in Gaelic football. And in Darren Fay they have a full back who is a throw-back to the old days in the way he guards that square.

Fay is what we are talking about when we look at what Tyrone were missing. Certain players inspire not just their team-mates but also their supporters. Brian Lohan, with that red helmet and the defiant long clearances, always did it for Clare.

Bellew for Armagh. If Darragh Ó Sé wins a ball for Kerry his first instinct is to drive with it and maybe scatter a few players and get everything going. It's an aura that some players carry. Séamus Moynihan had it. Darren Fay has it. It's the statement he makes in the way he plays, the jut of his jaw the way he comes out with a ball. Attitude.

If you are at a game there are certain players when they get the ball and it's not what they do so much as the way that they do it. For Tyrone, Dooher has been so close to the heart of their followers because he stands for everything that is good about that Tyrone team. Honesty. Work ethic. Teamwork.

The loss of McGuigan this summer was a huge blow. He was definitely the best playmaker in the country - by a distance. Tyrone play a different type of football to any other team out there. There is a lot of intricate moving and passing. It is like a web they weave. This year the spider was missing. McGuigan locked all the parts into each other, he knitted the play together, picked up the pieces, went deep for a ball, made the killer pass.

And we keep talking about Canavan. They say that great writers always have one person in mind who is their ideal reader, the person they privately write to please. With Mulligan it's as if Canavan's influence extended well outside the classroom. The way Mulligan held the ball up for Canavan in 2005 for that goal? I don't think he'd do that for many other players.

Are Tyrone gone? The pessimist would say that they play a high-octane game that demands huge energy levels and huge work rate. While that may not account for the waves of injuries they get it certainly takes its toll physically and mentally.

And Harte has been with a lot of the group since they were minors. They won an All-Ireland as minors. They won a couple of under-21s. Some of those players would have won five national medals at different age groups with Harte. That's a lot of mileage and a lot of time in dressingrooms and training fields listening to the one man.

On Saturday when Harte was asked would he be staying on, he said that he would, even though some people mightn't want him to. Reading between the lines, it struck me that part of his achievement is that Tyrone people now expect success every year, just like football people in Kerry or hurling people in Kilkenny.

He'll stay and my feeling is that Mickey Harte isn't one of those managers who will have to reinvent himself. There are a couple of things that will ensure that Tyrone players stay on edge. One is that culture of success and the demand for more of it.

The other is the supply coming through. Tyrone worked off a panel of something like 38 players this year. There was competition to get into the first 30 let alone the first 15. They rotated players. They brought in a corner back the last day, Damien McCaul, who nobody outside of Tyrone had heard of. Raymond Mulgrew is still developing and this year in the forwards, they had options like Tommy McGuigan, Niall Gormley, Colm Cavanagh and Colm McCullagh. When players aren't just keeping an eye out on the team sheet but watching to see if their name even comes up when the panel is announced that keeps them out of the comfort zone and keeps them honest. That's the formula that works for Brian Cody in Kilkenny.

Tyrone are right to expect success, their supply line of talent is impressive and that impatience they have makes Tyrone a very demanding place to manage a team. They have a manager who is up to those demands. Now is the time to remember that.