All-Ireland SFC final: Armagh v Galway (Sunday, 3.30pm, Croke Park, live on RTÉ2 & BBC2)
IT is a rare All-Ireland Sunday when football’s two royal powers are confined to their own quarters.
Of the 20 finals since Armagh and Tyrone shared it, just three have seen counties set foot on the dancefloor without one or both of Dublin and Kerry jumping into them with the tie around their heads and a bit of the necessary badness about them.
If you need reminded of how rare this opportunity is, consider that in 140 years Armagh have won one All-Ireland and Galway are third on football’s roll of honour with nine All-Irelands, level with Stephen Cluxton.
It is unbearably tantalising.
All-Irelands are so incredibly precious to anyone outside Kerry or Dublin precisely because they’re so rare.
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Even in Crossmaglen or in Corofin, places that know success, there is nothing near to a birthright for a day like this.
To look at the Galway teams of ‘98 and 2001, the Armagh crop of 2002, is to see their mortality and their immortality all at once.
The hair’s grey or gone, the crow’s feet more pronounced but the eyes don’t change, the mannerisms stay the same, and through the middle-aged man you will forever see the boy that won All-Irelands.
Particularly for Armagh’s one-and-only team, for as long as Gaelic football exists that boy’s place will never be eroded from the tabernacle.
Deep down in their belly, Armagh and Galway have to acknowledge that there’s a fairly good chance that Sunday isn’t a day that’s coming back to visit them again any time soon.
When they drew in June and Pádraic Joyce went full Irish rugby team and told Kieran McGeeney they’d see each other in the final, they were maybe the only two people in Ireland that believed it would happen.
Crucially for both, they’ve cleared their own path, each chopping a big tree.
Galway’s axe penetrated Dublin’s bark and found the rings starting to rot inside.
Armagh’s powers of recovery have been an over-utilised part of their make-up.
Armagh were four down and at Kerry’s mercy two weeks ago until Shane Ryan spilled the ball into the path of Barry McCambridge.
In the group game, Galway were 0-13 to 0-8 up and looking comfortable until Conor Gleeson went short when he shouldn’t have. Armagh snatched 1-1 quickly off uncertain kickouts and that will sow seeds of doubt that the Ulster men will want to water.
Even back to the epic quarter-final of 2022, Galway were six to the good going into stoppage time.
Is there more to it than Armagh are getting credit for? They wouldn’t want to be behind in games but their depth on the bench and their use of it has filled the tank back up too often for it to keep on being accidental.
They have will looked hard at this year’s group game and been slightly worried.
They sat in very deep looking to prey on turnovers but what they discovered was that a team of fifteen Marathon Monks would do well to match Galway for patience.
For minutes at a time they’ll quite happily keep the ball. It does make you wonder how differently they’d be talked about if they were wearing Tyrone or Derry or even Armagh jerseys. One man’s Ulster football is another man’s patience.
But they’re bloody good at it.
From 32 attacks against Donegal, they got off 28 shots.
From 32 attacks against Armagh in the group, they got off 28 shots.
Getting shots off means they’re not being turned over and caught out of their well-set defensive structure and that is what has enabled them to be so mean, conceding just that single goal to Tiernan Kelly in Markievicz Park.
You can say a lot of the same of Armagh. In league and championship, Blaine Hughes has kept 13 clean sheets from 16 games.
Their attacking play is different. It’s more zippy on the break, more direct, more built around Rory Grugan now than ever before. But they like to feast on turnovers too. One of Armagh’s key sources of oxygen will be depleted unless they can tempt Galway into traps better or else get contact higher up the pitch.
These two teams have drilled so deep into each other over the past three years that there’s little room for fresh discovery.
The only angle of difference you can find is the oldest one in the book – kick the ball in.
Damien Comer is a wrecking ball.
Andrew Murnin is a menace.
If two teams that have kicked so little ball all summer decide that’s their element of surprise, you’re looking at a chaotic and potentially brilliant final.
Galway, though, have been so utterly pragmatic in their approach that it’s hard to foresee it from them.
Comer’s role is bound to be frustrating him on some level. They just don’t kick him the ball.
Sean MacMahon marked him from a good seven, eight yards in front. It was crying out for Galway to try one in over the top, even if just to stop MacMahon marking there, but they never did.
Yet within the layers of complexity, the space he occupies in opposition minds is comparatively huge.
So many of the Galway scores in the semi-final were kicked from the side of the posts opposite to where Comer was positioned. Simply by being there, he drags across the sweeper and creates space. It’s unselfish in the extreme and has been mightily effective but the day they lose is the day people will say it’s not getting enough out of him.
Armagh might throw a late curveball with Ciaran Higgins. He has started two championship games out of the last 16. They were the two games against Galway, for which he was expected to mark Comer, only the Annaghdown forward didn’t play. Even Higgins’ presence on the bench indicates that it’s Plan B at worst.
When Pádraic Joyce took over Project Gaillimh five years ago he was handed the drawings and a trowel by Kevin Walsh.
Kieran McGeeney was five years down by then. He was hardly given a bag of sand to start and has been architect, bricklayer, plumber, plasterer and foreman all in one.
With it, they’ve both built incredibly storm-proof houses.
Galway’s has been almost impenetrable for anyone from Ulster. In 21 meetings with opposition from the northern province, Galway have lost just three times, winning 16 and drawing two.
But are they Armagh-proof? The Armagh that they’ve had beaten three times and only beaten once on penalties.
The Armagh that got 16,000 tickets but will somehow inevitably end up with 30,000 fans in the ground, feeding a frenzy of energy that their players have to at once maximise and not get too caught up in.
They have made an artform out of staying alive for long enough to win. Stefan Campbell, Ross McQuillan, Jarly Óg Burns, Oisin O’Neill, Aidan Nugent into the game in the second half, we know that drill by now.
Galway know it too. So much of Joyce’s study of the last 13 days will have revolved around coping with that because they will feel the trend of the fixture is that after 50 minutes, it has been at their command.
The scorelines in this fixture over the last three years have run contrary to the idea that Armagh can’t finish games out. They’ve finished far stronger than Galway on each occasion.
If you’re looking at the scoreboard after 55 minutes and Armagh are anywhere close, strap yourself in.
Armagh have to get their turnover count up and Galway’s attack-to-shot count down.
If they do both those things, alongside the joy you feel they’ll get off Conor Gleeson’s kickout again, then they will win.
But cold, hard, unforgiving logic points to Sam going west.