Mickey Harte's hopes of giving youth its fling in the upcoming Dr McKenna Cup has been hit by a college-versus-county dilemma. The Tyrone manager won't be able to select his squad for the pre-season competition until he finds out what players will be available to him, and he won't know that until the three universities, who also take part in the competition, name their squads. The universities - Queen's, UUJ and St. Mary's - have first call on players and that is likely to deprive Harte of some of the exciting young talents he wants to call up. He said in the Irish News: "Until we see the college lists, we don't know exactly whether we will have to leave some out or count some in. "There may be some we would want that they have included, so until we see their list, we can't exactly define what our preference is. When we see that, we'll see if there's some overlap and that would need to happen before we definitely put ours down on paper." Harte is keen to give a number of last year's All-Ireland minor winning team their first taste of senior inter-county action, but their involvement with college sides has thrown those plans up in the air. The Ballygawley man also ruled out any involvement in the McKenna Cup for members of the Fr Rock's, Cookstown team that won the Ulster IFC title on Sunday as their preparations for the All-Ireland semi-final in January will coincide with the competition. Tweet

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