Mickey Harte insists that clubs being expected to field without their county players is the exception rather than the rule.

Asked for his opinion on the newly-launched Club Players Association, the Red Hands manager - whose team hosts Donegal in Omagh tomorrow night - accepted that something needs to be done to fix the Club V County fixtures problem but added that the situation isn't as unbalanced as being portrayed:

"I can speak for Tyrone only with conviction and complete knowledge - there are 15 league games, four of them are starred games which means that county players are not available," he is quoted in The Irish News.

"They are available for all of the other league games and they are available for all championship games. Our clubs are not being starved of their county players. But some people would have you believe that there are county players not getting two games with their clubs all year and maybe not getting games with their county so their careers are lost that year.

"That may happen in some isolated cases, it may happen in some counties from time to time, but it doesn't happen in them all. It's not the norm, it's the exception. So why do we take these exceptions and hold them up as the norm.

"Look at the whole thing, get some real decent research in numbers and see what we come up with. If people come up with that kind of case scenario whenever they've done all that research then I'll say 'right, okay, I'll accept your findings.' But don't throw out these sound-bites and make us believe that's the truth always."

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