THE great news for Armagh fans is that Rian O’Neill won his appeal on his proposed one-match ban and is now available to line out for Armagh in their Ulster SFC clash against Donegal on 24th April 24
There is no doubt that having the team’s main scorer available instils more belief among his team-mates and they should now be going into the Ballybofey clash more confident of getting a result.
The loss of Aidan Nugent, Stefan Campbell and Ciaran Mackin will undoubtably be felt more so than that of Donegal’s Neil McGee and Odhran McFadden-Ferry, but there is strong back-up now to be able to make an impact.
Armagh have got to learn from this type of situation and not fall for the antagonistic approach again as the instigators on this occasion got dealt a lighter blow.
Nobody likes to see the pulling and dragging scenario like on this occasion and it is something that needs to be dealt with at CCC level in a fair manner, but examples simply cannot be made out of the likes of Armagh, Tyrone and Donegal when similar developments happened in the Kerry v Dublin match earlier on in the year and it is simply brushed under the carpet.
The Donegal v Armagh match has been a game that a lot of people, particularly in Ulster have been looking forward to since the draw was made, and the last couple of weeks have only whetted the appetite even further for this clash.
Can Armagh make the step up against one of the province's most consistent teams and prove that they are capable of competing for the Ulster title?
Going into Ballybofey, they will be underdogs, but they have to take with them a siege mentality that everything was done to throw them off track and use this to their benefit.
A time that sticks out in my mind from my playing days of us using that siege mentality was the Ulster first round game against Tyrone in 2002. Nobody was giving us a chance and Tyrone, with the emergence of young players from their successful minor and U21 All-Ireland-winning teams, were starting to make strides at senior level.
They had been crowned National League champions before this match so they were rightly installed as favorites.
It was Joe Kernan’s first year in charge so we took a different approach to this Championship by heading away for a hot weather training camp in La Manga.
This allowed us the opportunity to get plenty of training sessions under our belts, to work more on our game-plan and to have regular meetings to identify the strengths and weaknesses of our opponents. We did everything we had to do to get our preparations nailed on and I always remember the walk up the hill in Clones to head across to the old training field for our warm-up getting ridiculed by Tyrone supporters for going on our training camp. “Where’s your tans”, “What a waste of money” are some of the things that were being said, but our concentration levels were not to be broken and, on that day, a last-minute goal by Sean Cavanagh took the game to a replay.
Our chance was gone, they said, we missed the boat but we never believed that and, in the replay, we proved that we were a team to be reckoned with and that type of attitude can take you a long way.
As a player you always look for motivating factors and if I was in that Armagh camp right now, personally I would be honing in on the last couple of weeks and what has been said by pundits and ex-county players about Armagh and their tactics and going out with a point to prove.
This of course may not be Kieran McGeeney’s ploy as collectively it could be a disrupting factor, but it’s something that I as an individual would be using to get me ready for what lies ahead.
For what it’s worth, and what I have seen from Armagh in their National League campaign this year, they are more than equipped to win this first round match. Donegal too are more than equipped to do the same but with the right type of mentality, Armagh may just see this one out.
