The one-time team player/captain turned manager stood all alone for a time as the golden ticker tape lay around his feet, his men above him in the Hogan Stand. He listened to the words of his captain Aidan Forker which rattled around the stadium, those same words consumed with devotion by those clad in their tangerine tops, high-up and low-down, who didn’t want the speech to end or to leave any time soon. They stayed, and devoured.
Kieran McGeeney stood alone until he wasn’t alone, and those Armagh backroom members – to him, every bit as important as the management and players – noticed him and ran over and took up the golden tape and threw it over him and then others came and hugged and embraced him.
For McGeeney, who talked of “thin lines” and “sliding doors” and all those kind of margins which leave one on the right side and one of the wrong side of victory and defeat, this was a time to soak it all in and to realise those words of Forker were also his, 10 years in the making.
“ ... with faith and belief and hard work, anything is possible,” Forker told one and all from the steps of the Hogan Stand’s VIP area.
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Some time later, McGeeney sat in the press mixed zoned beneath the Hogan Stand. Time for his own words. There was humility. There was pride. That was yet again more talk of those thin lines and a palpable joy that, this time, he and his men had come out on the right side. The winning side. Outwardly, there was a calmness too. Perhaps, too, revealing an insight to his inner strength, his fortitude.
The noise had stopped. It was over.
“You know, it feels quiet. It’s like wearing a pair of ear muffs for a change, quietens all the noise,” said McGeeney the journey reaching a winning conclusion.
“To be honest, I’m just delighted for these boys. Back when we were playing, we got a couple of carrots to keep us going. Ulster championship. We had a couple of knock backs, but these fellas have got knock back after knock back after knock back, and they just keep coming.
“Penalty shoot-outs, everybody telling them they can’t win tight games, can’t beat teams above them ... [we] gave them a perfect answer. All-Ireland champions 2024. Delighted for them, absolutely over the moon. I couldn’t be any happier for them now, a great bunch of fellas.
“But to do what they’ve done over the last four or five years has been outstanding, to come back and win that one today.”
He was asked to compare winning as a player and, now, winning as a manager.
“Listen, when you play, you actually have an influence on it. You don’t when you don’t cross the white line. All the stuff is done before. I probably wasn’t such a happy fella back then. So I probably feel happier now!”
The game itself was typical of Armagh-Galway encounters of recent times. There were days there weren’t even a kick of a ball in it at the end and others when that’s all there were, draws and one-point wins or one-point losses. Always close. And close again.
“It’s a nip and tuck game, it always has been with Galway and ourselves. That’s our sixth game, three draws, another three have been decided by a point, so there’s not much in it.
“They’ve great depth to their defence, and they’re able to stop running in and stuff like that. We knew it was going to be tight, prepared the fellas knowing that. The third quarter they’re usually very strong, and we had our goal in that quarter to keep ourselves well in the game.
“And then the last quarter we’ve great legs coming off the bench. Gave a couple of balls away – which will happen when you haven’t won it before. Just that sort of belief, rather than self-sabotage. But brilliant tackle, I think it was by Ben [Crealey] on the far side that turned it over, changed the game.
“But they’re the thin margins. On other days we’ve been on the wrong side of it; today we got on the right side of it.”
Vindication, too, for McGeeney’s own temerity to stick at it and to instil that same belief into his players.
Of staying so long at the managerial helm in his quest for the Holy Grail, of bringing the Sam Maguire back to Armagh for only a second time, McGeeney explained: “I’d ask them every year – or every week – whether they still wanted me about. They tell me a few different things!
“But in the whole, they did. And once Armagh wanted me about, that was an easy choice. I know what it takes in a small county and a small club to try and win something. It takes a while; it takes a lot of people.”
And Kieran Donaghy, the Kerry legend who came on board as an Armagh selector, was unequivocal in giving so much of the credit to McGeeney:
“It’s McGeeney. I don’t say it lightly. It is. He’s an inspirational man. The man, he’s led this group and the way he’s kept his head and the way he’s kept it altogether in terms of what he’s had to go through personally himself, the shit he went through last year with people sticking signs up outside his house and wanting him out and all that kind of stuff,” said Donaghy.
“The easiest thing in the world after nine years and the heartache of another penalty shoot-out against Monaghan [in last year’s All-Ireland quarter-final] would have been to step away, but McGeeney doesn’t do easy and he demands it off his players not to take easy roads.
“Everything is about doing stuff right, approaching stuff right, doing your gym, doing your video, having your leadership groups, holding each other accountable. The learnings I have taken from him in terms of a culture and a team environment he has developed with this group is second to none.
“I think a lot people took shots off him at times this year but it’s him, it really is.”
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