Ulster Club Intermediate Football Championship semi-final
Arva 2-07 0-11 Magheracloone
It wasn’t even joy. There was too much shock for that. It was just mass delirium for Arva.
A Magheracloone woman in a black and white bauble hat made it out as fast as she could, meeting an acquaintance of some description at the gates:
“Did that just happen?! Did that just happen?!”
Barry Donnelly might well be asking himself the same. His last-gasp goal only came as a result of a tackle as he cut inside attempting to swing over the leveller.
But the ball broke. For 50 odd minutes, Magheracloone Mitchells were first to those breaks. This time it was the toe of Donnelly that won the race, poking home.
A moment of instinct, with it one of the best days of his life.
Just minutes before, captain Ciaran Brady almost lost the head. Four or five times Arva’s ill discipline had seen frees advanced. This time a desperate Brady got an Arva free overturned.
Magheracloone had managed the second period excellently against Storm Bert, and when Storm Breffni eventuallly hit it had all the marks of close but no cigar.
It genuinely felt they had left it too late.
They were still six down with five minutes to go. The excellent Adam McKeown was withdrawn, almost with an eye to a final.
Soon he was back in the fray as Arva picked off Ryan McNulty’s kickouts one after the next.
Tristan Noack Hoffman’s goal found the net the only way it physically could have, when it looked for all the world as if he had been swallowed up by three and four as he had been all afternoon.
His two poor first-half frees that fell short were then forgotten, irrelevant, deleted from history when Donnelly did the unthinkable.
Because Arva never looked like winning this game.
They didn’t even deserve to.
But when you are 23 matches unbeaten with an All-Ireland medal in the back pocket you are never, ever beaten.
Now it is 24, and not even they will truly know how. But they won’t care. Their character is unquestionable.
Football rarely lets loose in such a fashion to cause genuine, palpable shock. But in Crossmaglen, that shock was like a Class A drug and a low-lying, breath-sapping smog all in one final blast of Kevin Faloon’s whistle.
Storm Bert made his mark on this refixed encounter. The first-half was largely a tale of Allan Kieran mastering the breeze and Cian O’Hara struggling.
Arva had started the brighter. Conal Sheridan’s opener - from the second it left his boot - was never ending up anywhere else. Straight between the posts, wind or no wind.
And then Peter Morris’ snapshot had the All-Ireland Junior champions off to the ideal start playing into the elements.
That was two minutes in. They wouldn’t score again in the opening half.
Magheracloone tore into them. Killian Rudden set the tone at the back, allowing a young defence around him to run free.
Adam McKeown and Dylan Byrne in particular ran at will. But it was Kieran’s stamp all over.
His first of seven first-half scores came from a mark, as Rudden’s delightful long ball was collected 20 metres out and converted.
Magheracloone’s physicality was matched by their discipline. Hard and fair, turnover after turnover as Ciaran Brady, Hoffman and Thomas Partington were shut out of the game after running the show against Drumgath.
The latter then suffered a serious looking injury at the tail end of an opening half, one that saw Finbar O’Reilly’s men go a full half-hour without scoring.
Paudie McMahon was exerting a real influence, although Jack Doogan’s injury saw him moved to centre-back for the second half as Rudden went to the middle. Maybe that had a bearing in the end.
Ironically Arva opened the second half with the first two scores again, followed by another long scoreless spell.
But it was a scarcely believable 2-3 with no reply that somehow flipped everything on its head.
Mitchell’s defence had been a brick wall all day. A tsunami was about all that could knock it, and it duly came, Hoffman and Brady to the fore as they brought the fight when their journey seemed destined to end.
Now their story goes on. The Ulster final for the second year in succession.
This time it’s Balinderry and the Intermediate final.
And for this group, after this past year, and even more so after today, you genuinely couldn’t rule out anything.
Scorers
Arva: Barry Donnelly 1-0, Tristan Noack Hoffman 1-0, Kevin Bouchier 0-2 (2f) Conal Sheridan 0-2, Peter Morris, Jonathan McCabe, Ciarán Brady 0-1 each
Magheracloone: Allan Kieran 0-8 (5f, 1m mark, 1 ‘45), Dylan Byrne, Adam McKeown, Paudie McMahon 0-1 each.
Arva
Cian O’Hara; Dylan Maguire, Thomas Brady, Finbar McAvinue; Éanna Ward, Stephen Sheridan, Danny Ellis; Ciarán Brady, Tristan Noack Hoffman; Thomas Partington, Barry Donnelly, Jonathan McCabe; Peter Morris, Kevin Bouchier, Conal Sheridan.
Subs used: Charlie Madden, Fergal McGlade, Shane Hamilton.
Magheracloone
Ryan McNulty; Conor McKeown, Pete Ward, Dylan Byrne; Adam McKeown, Killian Rudden, Packie Doogan-Burke; Jack Doogan, Jamie Kieran; Dylan Farrelly, Allan Kieran, Kian Duffy; Paudie McMahon, Ryan Farrelly, Michael Metzger.
Subs used: Joe Kirk, Dan McCahey, Gavin Doogan.