Armagh suffer major blow

The chances of Armagh avoiding relegation for the second successive year have received a perhaps fatal blow with the confirmation that captain Ciarán McKeever has received a four-week suspension – and with that ruled of Sunday’s final round in Division Two against Galway.

With just one victory in six games – and two draws – Armagh are poised to make the drop to Division Three along with Longford. For Armagh to follow last season’s drop from Division One with another relegation would certainly make for worrying times, not least for first-season manager Paul Grimley.

McKeever’s suspension thus comes at a particularly bad time, the result of his reported involvement in a verbal altercation with Louth’s Brian White, back in March 16th, even though McKeever wasn’t actually playing. The Armagh county board confirmed yesterday the suspension was for “a total of four weeks”.

Armagh can only avoid relegation if they beat Galway (who are safe, and still in with a slight shout of promotion), while also hoping Wexford lose to Laois, or Louth lose to Longford.

Also ruled out through injury are Declan Carville, Gary McCooey, Conor McGeown and James Morgan, while Crossmaglen star Jamie Clarke is on his world sojourn, and is currently somewhere in Peru.

“I believe that our performances have been good enough for us to stay in the division,” Grimley said this week. “We have not always had the rub of the green but we know we need to win this game on Sunday, and get other results to go for us, or we are in trouble.”

No such worries for Westmeath manager Pat Flanagan, who with five wins and one draw in six games, remains the only unbeaten team across the entire Allianz Football League – and with already assured of promotion to Division One, no matter what happens in the final game against Derry.

On that basis, Flanagan has opted for almost completely different team, making 10 changes from that which started in the one-point win over Armagh in round six.

Learning and development
Meanwhile the GAA has launched a new Learning and Development Community Portal, intended to support the roles of those actively promoting Gaelic games both within the Association and across the educational sector. Located at www.learning.gaa.ie, it will publish eLearning content and resources from the Association's coach, referee, player and administrator development programmes.

Speaking at the launch event in Croke Park was Laois football referee Maurice Deegan, who took charge of last year’s All-Ireland final between Mayo and Donegal, and who gave his clear backing to the black card agreed at Congress last month.

“I think it’s very positive for the game,” he said, “because people just want to get on and play football, and at the end of the day, the only way to do that is to try and clean up the game, take out all this deliberate fouling that has crept into the game over the last year or two.

“Penalising a guy for pulling down a player is a no-brainer. If a player deliberately pulls another guy down it's an automatic black card. It’s the same with remonstrating with a referee or match official. They are very simple rules. Deliberate is an important word here because two fellas can go for a ball and one player can collide with the other and fall down accidentally. If he takes him out accidentally then it's a different scenario altogether.”