Armagh’s path to Football glory

KILLINAN END

Since the start of the 2023 Ulster Championship, Armagh have played 26 games between League and Championship. Leaving aside the coin-toss of penalties, they have lost just two games – to Donegal in the League Division 2 final by a point and to Tyrone in a group game in the 2023 championship by two points in Omagh. If you are shocked that the Sam Maguire has orange and white ribbons around its lugs you simply have not been paying attention. This has been threatening. We might concede your right to mild surprise.

One of the great measures of a manager’s impact in soccer is the ability to make a team “hard to beat”. It is a concept transferable to any sport. In essence it is about creating a decent defensive structure. Think Ireland rugby absorbing a battering against the Springboks during the World Cup but not caving in. It was Jim McGuinness’s bottom line in Donegal. In a quiet, understated way, it has been central to Kieran McGeeney’s campaign to bring the Orchard County to the Promised Land. An approach often maligned of course but when a team gets its entire score from play in an All-Ireland you can scarcely accuse them of being one-dimensional.

Armagh is one of those unusual counties in the North which has a relatively big population. Only nine counties in Ireland have a bigger population yet only five are smaller in size. As you would assume the population density is surpassed only by the greater Dublin and Belfast areas. Within that population the demographics have a limiting effect on the ability to field a Gaelic Football team. This county was in the eye of the Ulster Plantation storm in the seventeenth-century. One of the planters’ hallmarks was the planting of Orchards so you can figure out where the county’s nickname came from.

Rory Best, former Irish rugby international, is an Armagh man, but his area of Poyntzpass has only occasionally had an active GAA presence down the years. It is a village of around 600 people with five ‘places of worship’ – only one of them Catholic. Richill, a town down the road, has seven churches but none of them catering for the 7% of the local population that identifies as Catholic. It has eight sports’ clubs with none of them catering for the likely leanings of anyone of a nationalist persuasion. Any assumptions about Armagh’s population in the context of the county’s GAA potential must acknowledge these massive demographic caveats.

Given the size of the county and the restrictions of the population it is fair going to have 48 GAA clubs in Armagh. The names include the inevitable references to physical force tradition but not in the sense of the classic South Armagh reputation. Seán Treacy gets a nod from a hurling club formed in Lurgan in 1973. Seán South is the GAA club in Clady a rural area near the large town of Markethill which is a classic planted town with little or no GAA activity despite a population of a couple of thousand. Out the road from Markethill is Mullaghbrack a village of hardly more than fifty people but home to the O’Donovan Rossa GAA club. Identity is all-important here and the areas of very large population often tend to be GAA deserts.

South Armagh is different. With Crossmaglen at the centre, it is the heart of Armagh GAA. The story of Crossmaglen Rangers and its remarkable resilience in the face of very difficult circumstances down the decades might be a symbol for the county’s uphill GAA struggle. Out the road from ‘Cross’ you will find Silverbridge the home area of the GAA President’s club Silverbridge Harps. Next door’s club is Mullaghbawn Cuchulain’s, the club of Kieran McGeeney. Maybe when you strip away the areas which are GAA-resistant you are left with an area of football richness not matched in many counties with higher profiles. A notable part of the naming culture in the county’s GAA clubs are the references to the pre-famine period from Keady Michael Dwyer’s to Clonmore Robert Emmets and Madden Rapparees, and the Thomas Davis a club based on the Armagh side of Newry.

Armagh’s involvement on All-Ireland day has been occasional but memorable. The first appearance in 1953 against Kerry had huge novelty value and the first missed penalty in an All-Ireland Final. Some 24 years later, a team with Joe Kernan as a marauding midfielder ran into Dublin’s unforgiving propellors but went down fighting. The similarities between the All-Ireland Kieran McGeeney won as player and manager are stark. Kerry lost in 2002 1-12 to 0-14, a scoreline very similar to last Sunday’s. Rarely has a team been strangled slowly in the manner of Kerry 2002 – they led by four points at half-time having hit 0-11 in the first half; the second half featured just three Kerry points, and as with 2024 the only goal of the game from Armagh. In a nod to 1953 and 1977 it also featured a missed Armagh penalty. Their defeat of Galway in 2024 was not as total as the overwhelming of Kerry all those years ago. This one was tribute to economy of effort, efficiency of scoring, and above all else a water-tight defence.

One can but guess how many times in recent years Jarlath Burns has hit the pillow and imagined delivering his speech’s closing line “it gives me great pleasure to present the Sam Maguire cup to the captain of Armagh”. Sometimes the wildest dreams can come true.

Since the start of the 2023 Ulster Championship, Armagh have played 26 games between League and Championship. Leaving aside the coin-toss of penalties, they have lost just two games – to Donegal in the League Division 2 final by a point and to Tyrone in a group game in the 2023 championship by two points in Omagh. If you are shocked that the Sam Maguire has orange and white ribbons around its lugs you simply have not been paying attention. This has been threatening. We might concede your right to mild surprise.

One of the great measures of a manager’s impact in soccer is the ability to make a team “hard to beat”. It is a concept transferable to any sport. In essence it is about creating a decent defensive structure. Think Ireland rugby absorbing a battering against the Springboks during the World Cup but not caving in. It was Jim McGuinness’s bottom line in Donegal. In a quiet, understated way, it has been central to Kieran McGeeney’s campaign to bring the Orchard County to the Promised Land. An approach often maligned of course but when a team gets its entire score from play in an All-Ireland you can scarcely accuse them of being one-dimensional.

Armagh is one of those unusual counties in the North which has a relatively big population. Only nine counties in Ireland have a bigger population yet only five are smaller in size. As you would assume the population density is surpassed only by the greater Dublin and Belfast areas. Within that population the demographics have a limiting effect on the ability to field a Gaelic Football team. This county was in the eye of the Ulster Plantation storm in the seventeenth-century. One of the planters’ hallmarks was the planting of Orchards so you can figure out where the county’s nickname came from.

Rory Best, former Irish rugby international, is an Armagh man, but his area of Poyntzpass has only occasionally had an active GAA presence down the years. It is a village of around 600 people with five ‘places of worship’ – only one of them Catholic. Richill, a town down the road, has seven churches but none of them catering for the 7% of the local population that identifies as Catholic. It has eight sports’ clubs with none of them catering for the likely leanings of anyone of a nationalist persuasion. Any assumptions about Armagh’s population in the context of the county’s GAA potential must acknowledge these massive demographic caveats.

Given the size of the county and the restrictions of the population it is fair going to have 48 GAA clubs in Armagh. The names include the inevitable references to physical force tradition but not in the sense of the classic South Armagh reputation. Seán Treacy gets a nod from a hurling club formed in Lurgan in 1973. Seán South is the GAA club in Clady a rural area near the large town of Markethill which is a classic planted town with little or no GAA activity despite a population of a couple of thousand. Out the road from Markethill is Mullaghbrack a village of hardly more than fifty people but home to the O’Donovan Rossa GAA club. Identity is all-important here and the areas of very large population often tend to be GAA deserts.

South Armagh is different. With Crossmaglen at the centre, it is the heart of Armagh GAA. The story of Crossmaglen Rangers and its remarkable resilience in the face of very difficult circumstances down the decades might be a symbol for the county’s uphill GAA struggle. Out the road from ‘Cross’ you will find Silverbridge the home area of the GAA President’s club Silverbridge Harps. Next door’s club is Mullaghbawn Cuchulain’s, the club of Kieran McGeeney. Maybe when you strip away the areas which are GAA-resistant you are left with an area of football richness not matched in many counties with higher profiles. A notable part of the naming culture in the county’s GAA clubs are the references to the pre-famine period from Keady Michael Dwyer’s to Clonmore Robert Emmets and Madden Rapparees, and the Thomas Davis a club based on the Armagh side of Newry.

Armagh’s involvement on All-Ireland day has been occasional but memorable. The first appearance in 1953 against Kerry had huge novelty value and the first missed penalty in an All-Ireland Final. Some 24 years later, a team with Joe Kernan as a marauding midfielder ran into Dublin’s unforgiving propellors but went down fighting. The similarities between the All-Ireland Kieran McGeeney won as player and manager are stark. Kerry lost in 2002 1-12 to 0-14, a scoreline very similar to last Sunday’s. Rarely has a team been strangled slowly in the manner of Kerry 2002 – they led by four points at half-time having hit 0-11 in the first half; the second half featured just three Kerry points, and as with 2024 the only goal of the game from Armagh. In a nod to 1953 and 1977 it also featured a missed Armagh penalty. Their defeat of Galway in 2024 was not as total as the overwhelming of Kerry all those years ago. This one was tribute to economy of effort, efficiency of scoring, and above all else a water-tight defence.

One can but guess how many times in recent years Jarlath Burns has hit the pillow and imagined delivering his speech’s closing line “it gives me great pleasure to present the Sam Maguire cup to the captain of Armagh”. Sometimes the wildest dreams can come true.