Armagh stride out of the twilight

To be alive and in Clones on Ulster Final day. In that magical half-hour of pomp, ceremony and parades before the throw-in last Sunday afternoon the memories came cascading back, some vivid, others more hazy and less certain. Frank McGuigan's peerless tour de force in 1984 against Armagh which we watched open-mouthed standing behind the goal at the Town End.

That blistering hot day in 1989 when a three-piece suite was squeezed into the back of Brendan Starr's transit van and we travelled in luxury from Omagh to watch Tyrone and Donegal. Derry exorcising of all their ghosts in 1993. Tyrone making it back-to-back titles in 1996. So many phases of your life mapped out against a summer's afternoon in a small Monaghan town.

Last Sunday's final can now be added to the list. It was an afternoon when an Armagh side that had almost made a virtue of delivering cruel disappointments just when they needed one more big day strode out of the Ulster twilight. A 17-year gap since their last Ulster title had been closed, but much more significantly they had also dragged themselves towards a place at Ulster's top table. For the first 20 minutes Armagh were quite simply electrifying. The puppet masters, Canavan and McAlinden, have proved themselves to be keen students of the game and their opponents and they did it again on Sunday. Sensing that they were facing a Down defence much more comfortable with a tight-marking, controlled game, the Brians responded by isolating Diarmuid Marsden and Oisin McConville and allowing them the freedom of the park.

It was an inspired piece of thinking. This was the first time this summer Marsden and McConville had completed a game together in Armagh shirts and they stamped themselves gloriously all over this year's championship with one of the most potent forward displays seen in recent years, amassing 3-9 of a total of 3-12. It is fast becoming a real privilege to watch Marsden play. On the field of play he is as marvellously expressive as he is quiet and reserved off it. For years he has been threatening to arrive and there have been rumblings of greatness travelling south. On Sunday those whispers became a scream.

The passage of play that led to Armagh's opening 12th-minute goal will be frozen forever in time in the minds of those who saw it. As he shepherded Finbarr Caulfield away from goal, Andrew McCann's pass towards the left touchline seemed relatively harmless. But Caulfield didn't reckon on the amalgam of upper body power and blinding pace that is Marsden. In the space of two or three seconds Marsden had skipped away and the course of the game changed as McConville popped up on the shoulder of his partner in crime to complete one of the great Ulster final goals.

Nobody epitomises Armagh's recent transformation and coming of age more than Oisin McConville. A few years ago he looked nervous and bewildered against Tyrone in Omagh. Arriving into the championship with an exalted reputation, you could have been excused for wondering what all the fuss was about as he scuffed his way through 70 minutes of football. Last Sunday McConville was stroking points from play and dead-balls with an ease designed to embarrass a previously-lauded Down defence. If there are afternoons when a return of 2-7 only begins to represent the mark of your worth to your team, then this was it.

THIS Ulster final could prove to be something of an epiphany for Armagh, a day when the past and its agonies recede into the distant memory. The organised chaos that is their travelling support could sense it. A full five minutes before the end they were crowded around every inch of the Clones touch-line like so many eager lemmings ready to jump headlong off the cliff and into the future.

The relationship between Armagh supporters and the players they follow with religious fervour has always been curious. While the players have tended to lack confidence and self-belief, the fans have at times given the impression they are overburdened with too much of each. Last Sunday's win is unlikely to have dampened their fervour as they face into their first All Ireland semi-final since 1982, but the county should now have a collection of combatants more sure of themselves.

At their core beats the heart of Jarlath Burns. There is no more wonderful ambassador for the GAA and for GAA culture in the modern game than the captain of this team and one of the happy spin-offs of Armagh's season stretching into the shorter evenings of late summer is that Burns will now be afforded a national stage. Thirteen years in and around the county panel, Burns was devastated by last year's weak capitulation to Derry and seriously considered retirement. But a deep-seated yearning brought him back for one more tilt and Sunday was his vindication.

To spend time in his company is to rediscover all over again the visceral pull of these games and of this association. When Burns talks you listen and you realise that you are in the presence of one of those GAA totems around whom memories are built. These were his moments.

And then there is Houly. When Ger Houlahan first pulled on an Armagh shirt 16 years ago, Gaelic football shorts were embarrassing crotch-hugging affairs, the shirts always looked at least one size too small and the Ulster Revival was a gospel service in Bangor. Houly is Armagh's version of a Vietnam veteran - he has seen things in an orange shirt that no grown man should ever have to see. With the game won and the promised land within sight, the excitable throng began the clamour for him 10 minutes from the end. A winning Ulster final appearance to bookend this brilliant career.

The signs did not look encouraging as this is an Armagh management team not generally disposed towards sentiment. But the emotion of the occasion evidently softened the harder hearts of Canavan and McAlinden and Houly got his run out. He had the ball in his hands only once in the three minutes he was on the park, but it must have been the sweetest thing. As we shuffled up the Clones hill and into the throngs late on Sunday afternoon, Burns was still delivering an emotional acceptance speech. As the sunlight bounced off the winding road, snatches of Irish and English delivered in the same singsong Silverbridge accent drifted through the Monaghan air. It was the sound of redemption and it was the sound of deliverance.