2001 All-Ireland SFC Qualifying round three Galway 0-13 Armagh 0-12
If Armagh’s 2002 All-Ireland winners were to get the cinematic superhero treatment, then this match would get a starring role in the origin story.
It would end up being the last game in charge for ‘the two Brians’, Canavan and McAlinden, who had won Ulster titles as Armagh players and brought the county to the top of the provincial ladder as managers by the turn of the millennium.
Back-to-back Ulster titles – something only Tyrone in 1995-’96 had managed in the province in the previous 20 years – were won in 1999 and 2000 but followed by disappointing All-Ireland semi-final defeats to Meath then Kerry.
The first year Armagh didn’t score after the 43rd minute as Meath won 0-15 to 2-5, while in 2000 Maurice Fitzgerald forced a replay for Kerry that the Kingdom won after extra-time.
Although they lost their Ulster three-peat bid in a quarter-final defeat to Tyrone, wins over Ulster rivals Derry and Monaghan brought them to Croke Park – where they hadn’t won a Championship match since 1977 – to play Galway, who were there after a Qualifier win over Wicklow having lost the Connacht semi-final to Roscommon.
Armagh got off to a slow start – but they almost didn’t make it to Croke Park at all.
They were sitting on the bus at Kieran McGeeney’s Na Fianna club a little under a mile-and-a-half from Jones’ Road, waiting for a Garda escort that never arrived.
Navigating the north Dublin gridlock ratcheted up any nerves already present and then a hurried preparation at the ground led into a first half in which Armagh looked like they were still on the bus.
But Armagh’s apparent lack of cohesion wasn’t punished as much as it should have been by Galway, who led 0-4 to 0-1, thanks to points from Padraic and Tommy Joyce, Michael Donnellan and Alan Kerins, when John McEntee skewed over a goal chance for Armagh.
Donnellan was causing Armagh all sorts of problems and Oisin McConville exhorted his colleagues to rouse themselves after kicking a free to cut the deficit to 0-6 to 0-3.
They trailed 0-8 to 0-4 at half-time and McConville added another free early in the second half, but it would be 17 minutes until they scored again while Galway added points from the Joyces, Paul Clancy and Ja Fallon to go 0-12 to 0-5 up.
But Armagh started to find something. A little at first, then a little more as Diarmuid Marsden, McDonnell, Cathal O’Rourke and Barry O’Hagan picked apart the fibres of Galway’s lead. They were missing chances too and in the space of five or six minutes had completely taken over.
Two more O’Rourke frees got them to within one before O’Hagan clipped over the equaliser with two minutes left. Seven points on the spin, and surely only one winner.
But no more chances came until the last seconds of injury-time when Donnellan blocked an attempted clearance from Justin McNulty and started the move Paul Clancy finished to win the match.
Galway, under the late John O’Mahony, would go on to beat Meath to win their second All-Ireland title in three seasons – the third team in-a-row to lift Sam having ended Armagh’s summer.
The Ulster side were clearly among the very best teams in the country, but had fallen short again.
The post-mortem in Armagh resulted in the two Brians leaving their posts and Joe Kernan, manager from Crossmaglen’s three All-Ireland Club title wins, taking over.
The following season Armagh played three matches at Croke Park, losing none of them and winning the last one to win the All-Ireland title for the first time.
2022 All-Ireland SFC quarter-final Galway 2-21 Armagh 3-18 (after extra-time, Galway won 4-1 on penalties)
Where to start with a match that not only has its own Wikipedia page but has one that’s longer than the entries for the entire 2022 football Championship, bread, butter, ham, and every album Stevie Wonder has ever recorded?
Both sides got to Croke Park having only played provincial competition, but in contrasting contexts.
While Galway claimed their first Connacht title since 2018 with a hard-fought wins over Mayo and in the final against Roscommon sandwiching a facile victory over Leitrim, Armagh were thrown out the back door by Donegal in their Ulster opener.
That pathway had been reopened after two years of Covid-enforced, old-style knock-out Championship. The first season of the Tailteann Cup reducing the race for the Sam Maguire to 16 teams meant Armagh would have to negotiate just two games to get to the last eight.
The first of those was a home clash with defending All-Ireland champions Tyrone, which Armagh won by six points before hammering Donegal in a Clones rematch of their Ulster encounter.
Armagh pushed into a 0-7 to 0-4 lead approaching half-time but the tide shifted as Galway gained a vital foothold – enough to go in level at the break with the last three points of the half.
They started the second better too and, after Ethan Rafferty got his fingertips to Matthew Tierney’s blasted effort to push it onto the bar, the ball cannoned out to Dylan McHugh, who fed Tierney, who fed Johnny Heaney to slap the ball home.
Armagh’s Greg McCabe was red carded for a mistimed shoulder on Tierney and Armagh slipped further back as Galway moved six points ahead 30 seconds into the eight minutes of injury-time.
Aidan Nugent got a goal back but there was still four in it in the 75th minute when Conor Turbitt pounced on a poor clearance from Galway goalkeeper Conor Gleeson to raise another green flag.
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The clock had ticked past 79 minutes when Rian O’Neill boomed over the free kick from outside the 45 that sent the match to extra-time on a 2-14 to 1-7 scoreline.
Before it could get that far some bumping and shoving as the sides headed of the field escalated into something between a melee and a brawl that saw Armagh’s Aidan Nugent and Galway’s Sean Kelly red carded despite appearing to be peacemakers if anything. Tiernan Kelly who was a member of the extended Armagh panel on the day, would be hit with a six-month ban for an apparent eye gouge on Damien Comer.
Cillian McDaid found the net for Galway in the second half of extra-time, replying to one from Rory Grugan, and then kicked the injury-time point that meant a penalty shoot-out for the first time in senior Championship history.
Campbell and Turbitt missed for Armagh while every Galway player converted to book a semi-final against Derry, which they won before losing the decider to Kerry.
2015 All-Ireland SFC Qualifying round 2B Armagh 0-12 Galway 1-12
Kieran McGeeney’s first season in charge of Armagh began encouragingly with promotion from Division Three but ended with a couple of summer body blows at home in the Athletic Grounds.
First Donegal came to Armagh city and made a mockery of the notions fed by their somewhat fortuitous one-point win over Armagh in the previous year’s All-Ireland quarter-final that the game was too close to call and wiped the floor with their hosts. Paddy McBrearty scored a second-minute goal, Donegal led by 10 at the break and the match was long over.
They did manage to reset with a Qualifier win over Wicklow although headlines the week before the Galway game were dominated by the fallout from behind-closed doors challenge match with Dublin that saw Dub Davy Byrne hospitalised with a facial injury and a brawl break out before the throw-in.
Then-GAA director general Paraic Duffy later criticised both counties for their unwillingness to assist the CCCC with their investigation.
Like Armagh, Galway were in their first season under the management of an All-Ireland winning legend from his playing days with the county and Kevin Walsh’s side arrived at the Athletic Grounds having eased past New York and Leitrim before a four-point Connacht semi-final defeat to Mayo.
They brought with them a packed defence that mirrored their hosts, and the first half was tight, with Damien Comer looking the most dangerous forward on show.
His two points were the difference at the half-time as Galway led 0-9 to 0-7, while long-range scores from Ethan Rafferty – then playing out the field – and James Morgan helped keep Armagh in touch.
A goal was always likely to prove crucial in such a cagey encounter and Galway got it in the 42nd minute when Paul Conroy’s free dropped short and Comer rose to fist it past Matthew McNeice to the Armagh net.
In truth, Armagh never looked like turning things around after that, and Galway pushed seven ahead with points from Danny Cummins and Gary Sice, while it took Armagh until the 16th minute of the second half to get their first score after the break.
Galway held on to continue their Qualifier run of Ulster clashes with a home win over Derry. That run ended when Donegal beat them by 10 points at Croke Park in round 4B.
2023 All-Ireland SFC Group Two Armagh 1-12 Galway 0-15
Armagh and Galway may have been jostling for top spot in their group but they were in lockstep a fortnight before the match when they submitted a joint request to the GAA to move their final round-robin match from Carrick-on-Shannon to Croke Park.
Concerns about the capacity of Avant Money Páirc Seán Mac Diarmada, set at 10,000, prompted the move but after some disappointing crowds in previous rounds the GAA stood firm and were proved correct as tickets were available right up until throw-in and fewer than 7,000 supporters made the trip to Leitrim.
Those who didn’t go missed an absolute cracker as Armagh secured a direct path to the quarter-finals with a one-point win.
The sides were level at 0-4 apiece when Galway full-back Sean Kelly cut in from the left and went down under the influence of four Armagh players. Rory Grugan took a yellow card for it but goalkeeper Ethan Rafferty made sure that was the extent of the damage when he dived to his left to catch Shane Walsh’s tame penalty in his breadbasket.
Kelly’s next forward foray brought scoreboard benefits for Galway as he collected the ball on the Armagh 45 before ghosting past Stefan Campbell and into a yawning gap in the Orchard defence and calmly sidefooting past Rafferty for a goal.
But Armagh immediately replied with Campbell finishing a move from the subsequent kickout to pull to within a point.
Cillian McDaid’s point gave Galway a two-point interval lead but Armagh responded excellently on the restart, scoring three in-a-row in the space of five minutes to hit the front again.
The lead continued to seesaw all the way until Andrew Murnin pounced on a loose Galway pass in the Armagh half and hared almost all the way to the Tribe’s 20-metre line where he was fouled deep in injury time. Rory Grugan scored the free but Galway had a chance of their own to grab a draw only for Walsh’s last-kick free to drop wide and short.
Both sides would go on to lose their next match, Galway beaten by a point by Mayo in their preliminary quarter-final and Armagh on the wrong end of a penalty shoot-out against Monaghan in the All-Ireland quarter-final.
2013 All-Ireland SFC Qualifying round 2B Galway 1-11 Armagh 0-9
The formlines looked like opposite sides of a mountain when Galway welcomed Armagh to Salthill for their Qualifier clash 11 years ago.
While both had suffered disappointing defeats at the first hurdle of their respective provincial Championships, Galway’s was particularly chastening.
Eternal Connacht rivals Mayo hammered them by 17 points at Pearse Stadium, and Galway finished with 13 men after straight red cards for Gareth Bradshaw and Niall Coleman.
Things didn’t get a lot better in the Qualifiers for Alan Mulholland’s side with consecutive draws against Division Four sides only providing headaches rather than a chance to build steam. They followed a four-point win over Tipperary with a one-point escape against Waterford.
Armagh, meanwhile, had regrouped after losing in the Ulster preliminary round to Cavan by walloping Wicklow 2-21 to 0-2 then Leitrim 8-13 to 0-10.
So Armagh, in their first season under Paul Grimley, headed west warm enough favourites but returned out of the Championship.
The visitors started sluggishly, three points behind after 10 minutes, but were kicking wides – six in total before the break – and were hit with what would prove to be a crucial blow in the 24th minute when Danny Cummins palmed in a goal.
Armagh went in at the break trailing by four but improved on the resumption, with Stefan Campbell, who was introduced from the subs’ bench late in the first half, to the fore.
The Clan na Gael man scored three second-half points and twice got Armagh to within two, but Galway kept their noses ahead.
The second time a Campbell score reduced the deficit to a couple Galway took decisive control with four points on the spin from Paul Conroy, Gary Sice and a brace from Michael Meehan.
The Tribe’s summer ended next day out when they lost by a point to Cork.