As Tyrone and Armagh prepare to renew hostilities on Saturday, Brendan Crossan chats to former greats John McEntee and Brian McGuigan about a rivalry that extended long into their retirement years...
THE enmity between Armagh and Tyrone was as authentic and real as you could get on a football field.
Well, most of the time.
In Voices of Croke Park, Peter Canavan described the rivalry between the two neighbouring counties as “fierce”.
He remembers a tournament game in Castleblayney under lights in ’89 when a bad row broke out.
“There were three men not involved in the row – myself, Leo McGeary, a corner-back, and a cousin of mine, and Benny Tierney of Armagh,” writes Canavan.
“We looked at each other and thought we should be in the middle of it because they were tearing lumps out of each other.
“So, me and Tierney started sham-fighting. Tierney came over to me then and said: ‘Come on Canavan, I’ll take you on now’.
“He was bouncing around the place. The Armagh supporters saw this and started shouting: ‘Go on Tierney, take the head off the wee b*****d’!
Years after the halcyon days of the ‘Noughties’, when Armagh and Tyrone jockeyed for top spot, Joe Kernan reflected: “I’d say now there was hate there but we’d respect for them. Fair play to them, they went on to do something that we didn’t do, and we’ve got to look at ourselves and say why. Was there much between us? A piece of thread.”
Armagh’s All-Ireland winning manager was miffed when Tyrone didn’t give them a guard of honour prior to a National League game in Omagh in March 2003.
The following year, Armagh were faced with the same conundrum before a McKenna Cup semi-final at Casement Park.
“The reason we gave them a guard of honour was because we knew it was the right thing to do,” Kernan told The Irish News in 2018.
“And, do you know what, we gained a lot of respect from Tyrone people. People knew that it was wrong that it wasn’t given to us. Many people said to me: ‘Fair play to you Joe, at least you respected us when we won the All-Ireland.’”
The sides clashed in a 2009 Ulster quarter-final in Clones which Tyrone won by a goal but were by far the superior team. Fireworks were expected prior to the game.
What ensued was arguably the most passive encounter between two sworn enemies.
There wasn’t a dirty stroke or angry word exchanged between Ryan McMenamin and Stevie McDonnell that afternoon. They played like United Nations delegates in peace time.
Both teams were long past their best in ’09; the sharp edges of a rivalry had probably been planed away by the heavy events of ’03 and ’05.
John McEntee can afford a wry smile now at the time ‘Ricey’ McMenamin collapsed his two knees into the Crossmaglen man’s neck and chest towards the end of their epic 2005 Ulster final replay at Croke Park.
“I was just wrecked,” McEntee laughs. “It gave me an opportunity to recover. It probably looked worse than it was.”
McMenamin was issued a yellow card but it was later upgraded to a red.
Tyrone later found favour with the Disputes Resolution Authority [DRA] and McMenamin was free to play in their All-Ireland semi-final against Armagh a matter of weeks later.
McMenamin’s plea for leniency was helped in no small part by McEntee who penned a letter to the disciplinary authorities in support of his rival.
“I had no hesitation in saying at the time it was an accident and on we went,” McEntee says now.
“Ricey was a character. On the pitch, he was loud and aggressive and all that sort of stuff, but he was somebody you’d want to have on your team by the same token.”
Armagh and Tyrone were both angels with dirty faces during those encounters.
There were Ricey's errant knees into McEntee's neck and chest and Peter Canavan being swung around like a rag doll by an Orchard squad.
There were a few opportunities for the Armagh and Tyrone players to mix at different events, Railway Cup and International Rules tours. But those opportunities were never truly embraced because the on-field rivalry ran so deep.
McEntee remembers playing a Railway Cup game in Cork. The selected Tyrone players travelled separately from the rest of the Ulster squad, they played the game and went straight home.
“They didn’t go for food or anything after the game,” McEntee says. “Even when there was an opportunity to mix and to get to know fellas, they didn’t take that opportunity.
“Now, we went to university with a few of them. I got to know the likes of Enda McGinley who was a great fella. But you didn’t get to know a lot of them.
“As the years went on and we’d all retried, we were okay with some and others we were still not okay with. People look back at Diarmaid [Marsden] being sent off in the 2003 All-Ireland final.
“There are sporting moments that stay on the pitch and you move on from, but that one was one that stuck with us.”
In the early ‘Noughties’, there was something looser, more relaxed about the Tyrone players.
For starters, they were younger than Kernan’s Armagh team and had their fair share of jokers many of whom came through the guiding hands of Mickey Harte at minor and U21 level.
Brian McGuigan, Tyrone’s playmaker of the ‘Noughties, says: “We’d so many characters in our changing room that, I wouldn’t say they didn’t take it as serious, but we were able to get the balance right. You had ‘Mugsy’, ‘Hub’ Hughes, Philly Jordan and then you had Chris Lawn, Dooher and Peter Canavan.”
Both camps agree that the Irish News Ulster Allstars bash in the Armagh City Hotel in 2003 was a key moment in the course of their respective histories.
Scheduled just a few weeks out from their historic All-Ireland final showdown, Armagh needed to be persuaded to attend the event.
Joe Kernan and award winners Kieran McGeeney, Aidan O’Rourke, Paul McGrane and Stevie McDonnell (John McEntee was unable to attend) rarely budged from their round table right beside the exit door of the sprawling function room.
The Tyrone players, by contrast, mingled easily.
“In that room that night, we came across badly,” Kernan recalls. “We were totally wrong. We messed up. We came in a side door and out a side door.
“I was embarrassed. To me, you have responsibilities to be in a certain place. I would have preferred if we had sat down, enjoyed the night and walked out.
“Sometimes you’ve got to bluff. I thought we made the wrong decision – going in and hiding over in the corner and not mixing. I knew what was happening in the room and from my point of view I thought we lost ground… It was desperate. I didn’t enjoy that night at all.”
McGuigan says: “Everybody remembers that Irish News Allstars night. Mickey used that the next night at training and said: ‘These boys are feeling the pressure, not us.’
“And do you know what, you hear Armagh players talking about those times since and you sense that, they mightn’t have enjoyed those days as much as they should have. If you watch the national anthem before the ’03 final, you see the Armagh faces, they were almost over-hyped for the thing.”
The three-times All-Ireland winner adds: “We probably went into that game a wee bit more relaxed than Armagh and yet they had an All-Ireland under their belt and you might have thought the pressure was on us.
“But Armagh were so engrossed, they forgot to relax maybe and put too much pressure on themselves, whereas Mickey was very relaxed; he let us do what we wanted in terms of the media. It was a free-for-all, really.”
The summer before, when Kieran McGeeney raised the Sam Maguire, McGuigan, ‘Hub’ Hughes and a few others made a weekend of it in Dublin.
They took in the Kilmacud Sevens and headed on to Croke Park to watch their neighbours achieve the ultimate.
McGuigan left Jones’s Road with a feeling of “pure jealousy” – but was also buoyed by the notion that maybe Tyrone weren’t that far away themselves from landing the biggest prize in their sport.
In his prime, trying to stop McGuigan at number 11 was like trying to nail jelly. He was always the smartest man on the field.
Armagh made a conscious decision not to man-mark the Ardboe man.
McGeeney held the centre. McGuigan roamed.
“McGeeney was such an iconic figure,” McGuigan says.
“You just needed to look at the size of me and the size of him. There was no point in me trying to compete physically with Kieran…
“He was always going to hold the centre and my main job was to pull into those pockets of space and McGeeney had to make a decision then. Was he going to follow me or was he going to hold his position?
“The fact that he held his position meant that I was free.
“I had an easy enough job because nobody was picking me up and I was able to link the play. After the first ’05 Ulster final, Joe Kernan put a man-marker on me.
“Aaron Kernan marked me the next two days [2005 Ulster final replay and All-Ireland semi-final] and he did a fantastic job on me. I struggled to get into those game, but Armagh probably lost a bit of Aaron’s game too.”
As far as football rivalries go, nothing will eclipse Armagh and Tyrone of the ‘Noughties’. The following decade, the enmity between Monaghan and Donegal illuminated the Ulster Championship – but not as brightly or as forcefully as what went before.
“The rivalry probably brought the best out of the two teams,” McGuigan says. “They were great times.
“In 2005, we had those two Ulster finals and the All-Ireland semi-final, the Celtic Tiger was booming, we were staying in Dublin more than we were staying at home because most of our matches were in Croke Park. The colour driving into Croke Park for the Ulster final was just unbelievable.
“You couldn’t explain it to young people nowadays.”
In the end, Armagh and Tyrone were essentially two rivals that didn’t really get to know one another away from the game. There has been the odd thaw here and there.
In January, the Crossmaglen Rangers club hosted an appreciation night for Francie Bellew.
Unassuming off the field – an absolute beast on it.
Both Bellew and Owen Mulligan were sworn rivals 20 years ago. Bellew had his moments in those career-defining encounters and ‘Mugsy’ undoubtedly had his.
“‘Mugsy’ came up to the club for Francie’s night and I have to say he was an absolute gent,” McEntee says. “He had great craic and I was delighted to see him there. No airs or graces about him. We saw him in a different light because we never had the opportunity to meet.”
McGuigan and McEntee will be in Healy Park on Saturday night for the Tyrone-Armagh Championship clash, a rivalry that has started to bubble again.
“There is still that thing,” McEntee muses. “Something about travelling to Omagh, something that digs up the ghosts of the past, even going to the game as a supporter on Saturday evening.”
