Armagh provide more answers

All-Ireland SFC Qualifier Round Four: Armagh 4-10 Limerick 0-11  When you are All-Ireland champions, it makes no difference: blockbuster afternoons against the Dubs in Croke Park or football under the shroud of thunder and lightning in the deepest west. You find a way. You get on with it and win.

Limerick did not need the sky's electrical illumination in order to see where they lie in the greater scheme of things. They matched Armagh in many ways here in Hyde Park yesterday but in all the critical areas, they were against a team operating in a different realm.

As Stevie McDonnell celebrated a hat-trick in the midst of a rainstorm late in the game, the scoreboard showed that a great chasm had opened between the teams. And as Limerick's Muiris Gavin observed afterwards, it never felt like Armagh were 11 points a superior team to the beaten Munster finalists. Yet they were, easily.

The great trick for All-Ireland champions is to find a living cause when the celebrations have died down. Respect has become the motif for Armagh. Perhaps rightly, they feel their achievement last September was not fully recognised. Joe Kernan has masterfully given his squad licence to prove everybody wrong.

Those who reckoned Armagh's All-Ireland was merely based on a wonderful 30 minutes against Kerry last year have been missing the point about this team. The thing about Armagh is they have practically mastered the art of being as good as a given occasion demands. Although they possess in their number some of the finest individual players on the island, the importance of the team is paramount. Alone among teams left in the All-Ireland championship, they respond to a single heartbeat.

A fortnight ago in Dublin, John McEntee ruined Dublin's summer with a series of splendid individual points. Yesterday, he did not attempt a single shot, busying himself with more prosaic duties.

In terms of scoring, it was McDonnell's turn to shine. And 3-4 was a ridiculous tally given the madness of the conditions - blazing sun followed by thunderous downpours. The Killeavy forward has such beautiful balance he could play football on an ice rink and here he did to Tommy Stack what he had done to Dublin's Paul Griffin.

It did not matter Armagh are trying to nurse Oisín McConville through a crisis of confidence or that Diarmuid Sheehy got to grips with Diarmuid Marsden or Tony McEntee was again ordered back to help smother the fire of Limerick's attack. Nothing mattered because McDonnell was quite unstoppable.

There must have been times when Limerick wondered about the fairness of life. Years in the twilight zone of Gaelic football and then in a sudden rush they face Kerry and Armagh. The raid on Páirc Uí Chaoimh had to have been a distant memory. Tired and drained they may have been but for long periods they threw their hearts and souls against the iron door Armagh put up. It was 0-3 each after 19 minutes. It was possible to envisage a fraught and tense classic. But the champions were merely probing. Kieran McGeeney is fast approaching his own standards of excellence and it was his long ball to McDonnell that yielded the first goal.

Limerick responded through a point from Conor Fitzgerald and a fine free from the industrious Gavin. Then McDonnell struck again. Limerick were pulled up on a dubious free and Armagh broke quickly through Marsden and McEntee before McDonnell's lethal strike. Four minutes before half-time, it was a killer for a heavy team coming off a defeat.

The heavens opened while the teams hid in their caves and the second half was mostly a dark and unloved thing. Limerick bravely pushed and drove and Armagh's backs repelled them with a look of economy that was withering. The unhurried Aidan O'Rourke wandered up field with impunity and it was one such run that led to Ronan Clarke's goal, a typically fast burning Armagh move aided by John McEntee.

That left the scores at 3-9 to 0-9 after 57 minutes. The denouement was heart-breaking for Limerick; a slip by Jason Stokes and Marsden was tearing down centrefield. His perfect pass found McDonnell; he scored and the clouds growled their appreciation.

So treacherous was the ground in that second half it made Limerick's fight back almost impossible. As it was, they were too reliant on Gavin for scores while Stephen Kelly and Conor Fitzgerald had no space to breathe in Armagh's claustrophobic defence. The Limerick back line, with just McDonnell and Marsden up front for Armagh, looked a lonely place in comparison. These are the conditions Armagh create and in which they thrive.

It is a measure of the speed of Limerick's revival that they have a right to feel disappointment after being beaten by the All-Ireland champions. Their future glitters with potential but given the general evening of standards, better days ahead are far from being assured.

That is something Armagh absorbed long ago. In modern football, you don't always get what you deserve. You get what you get. Respect may be their primary reason for closing in on the All-Ireland quarter-finals. But with each passing game comes the feeling that winning the garlands is the least of their concerns and that they are slowly but surely closing in on true greatness.

ARMAGH: P Hearty; A Mallon, A McCann, F Bellew; A O'Rourke, K McGeeney, E McNulty; P Loughran, P McGrane (0-1); R Clarke (1-1), J McEntee, O McConville (0-3, two frees); S McDonnell (3-4, two frees), D Marsden, T McEntee. Subs: J Toal (0-1) for Loughran (59 mins), B O'Hagan for McConville (60 mins).

LIMERICK: S O'Donnell; M O'Riordan, D Sheehy, T Stack; C Mullane, S Lucey, D Reidy; J Quane, J Galvin; S Kelly (0-1), M Gavin (0-9, six frees, one 50), S Lavin; C Fitzgerald (0-1), J Stokes, M Reidy. Subs: P Ahern for D Reidy (half time), J Murphy for M Reidy (half time), P Browne for P Ahern ( 66 mins).

Referee: J Bannon (Longford).