All-Ireland SFC Group 1, round two
Derry v Armagh (Sunday, 4pm, Celtic Park, live on RTÉ2)
IN the weeks since Shaun Patton walked out into the middle of Celtic Park armed with the least secret weapon in Gaelic football, Derry have just been trying to stop the bleeding.
No sooner had they relinquished their Ulster title than reports began to emerge that their training camp in Portugal hadn’t gone as smoothly as they would have liked.
The trip itself was a strange departure for Mickey Harte.
Throughout his time in Tyrone, he viewed foreign training camps with the same suspicion as challenge games.
In 2005, right in the middle of the La Manga era, he took Tyrone to Greenmount Agricultural College just outside Antrim town for a three-day bootcamp.
The players stayed in dorms, trained in the morning, came in for lunch then went out and trained again.
In the evenings, they held quizzes and games. And for three days, Owen Mulligan did everything in his power to escape and find his own craic.
That’s the nature of these things. Inter-county management is not an adventure predisposed to straight lines.
Just look at all the tribulations of discipline on and off the field that John Kiely has had to manage during his trophy-laden time in charge of Limerick hurlers.
It would have been easy for them to be knocked off a path that remains signed for five-in-a-row but with every wobble, Kiely has gripped the wheel tight and held on for long enough for their next big second-half comeback to come along.
One of the great strengths of Harte’s noughties management of Tyrone was his ability to let things sort themselves out when the time was right.
Doing nothing well is an artform. Let things chart their own course. There are books written about it. The Dutch call it ‘niksen’.
A teetotaller, Harte implemented a drink ban in the middle of their 2003 campaign. The players weren’t delighted about it.
When they beat Fermanagh in the All-Ireland quarter-final on the August Bank Holiday weekend, they all stayed in Dublin after the game.
A few players sneaked out to the Citywest Hotel after their game, took a few pints, headed for the cot thinking they’d gotten away with it.
Next morning, the trio woke up to discover another larger crew of man had been in Coppers and didn’t get back in until 8am.
There were a few bleary eyes surveying the Roscommon-Kerry quarter-final that afternoon.
Harte would have found out but what else could he do other than leave it sit and be content that the players would find their own way back into line?
Three weeks later, they harangued and harassed and hounded Kerry into submission, producing that famous passage of play in which Tyrone redefined what it meant to defend in Gaelic football.
A month after that, they were All-Ireland champions, famously having gone along to the Irish News Ulster Allstars in relaxed form while Kieran McGeeney led a stuffy Armagh group in and out as swiftly as they could make it.
Twenty-one years on, Harte and Derry were cruising along at a fair altitude after the league final. Donegal brought the turbulence in Celtic Park and it hasn’t stopped since.
The injuries, the defections of a few fringe men, defeat by Galway, Gareth McKinless’s red card and now suspension, it has needed a bit more than the lighter-touch steering of springtime.
The last two weeks have been more settled. Eoin McEvoy and Conor Doherty back, Cormac Murphy returned to the subs.
They’re steeling themselves for this.
If you asked the manager of the top ten teams in Ireland who in that group they’d want to play if they were in Derry’s position right now, trying to absorb back-to-back losses, would the beaten Ulster finalists be the answer from most of them?
Presented with bleeding opponents, Armagh have taken their sleeve and wiped it off for them.
In three of the four games that have gone to penalty shootouts, Kieran McGeeney’s team conceded the equalising score in extra-time.
Four up on Donegal in the second half of normal time in this year’s Ulster final, two up again in extra-time, as they were against Derry last year, Galway and Monaghan both half beaten, and they didn’t win any of them.
Penalty shootouts, refereeing decisions, just sheer bad luck, whatever it’s been, the inability to win those tight games is a criticism of Armagh that will stick to them until they find ways to end it.
For both teams, this is the defining game of the summer.
Whoever loses would almost inevitably finish third in the group. That means they’re facing three big games in three weeks. First they’d be away to a second-placed team the weekend after the final group games.
If they survive that it’s only another six or seven days’ rest before an All-Ireland quarter-final most likely against one of Kerry, Dublin or Donegal.
And it only gets harder from there.
Neither Derry or Armagh are in a place where they can withstand that run.
For Derry, an assault on an All-Ireland been a more realistic ambition.
Because when you remove the last six weeks, you still have the team that won back-to-back Ulster titles the previous two seasons, held Kerry over the bridge, branched out against Dubs in a league final.
There is a response coming from Derry on Sunday. You can feel them stewing.
All the frustration, all the questioning, all the criticism, all the wondering if they’re really all that, it has to feed a frenzied, angry performance, and a performance like from this Derry team wins the game.
Anything less and you will be able to write them out of the running.
In terms of proper statement wins, Armagh have the group stage victory over Galway last year, the qualifier that ended Declan Bonner’s time with Donegal and precious little else.
They got their tactics right in last year’s Ulster final. The high press gave Derry awful trouble and, worryingly for Harte’s side, it was Padraig McGrogan’s composure on the ball that so often broke that press.
How fit Paddy Burns and Rian O’Neill are will determine a lot for the visitors too.
This game is the whole summer for both Derry and Armagh.
Lose and the road back is too long, confidence too shattered, to feel there’s any chance of winning their next five games in a row to claim an All-Ireland.
Derry have not become a bad team overnight. Six weeks ago, six months ago, two years ago, the same team gets tipped to beat Armagh, what, six seven, eight times out of ten?
Maybe the wound is already too deep but you sense Derry will get a tourniquet tied on Sunday and start the process of stitching their All-Ireland dream back together.