Hell of a way for it all to end for Armagh

Keith Duggan Sideline CutThe footballers of Armagh owe it to themselves - and, damn it, to us - to commit to one more season. The beauty of sport is that you don't necessarily get what you deserve. When Armagh regrouped after last summer's shocking and still-vivid loss against Fermanagh, they rampaged through the league and on through Ulster, unstoppable in their desire to take care of unfinished business. But all of that counted for nothing when Peter Canavan stood with the ball in his hand and casually studied the posts through which he would deliver the score that will haunt his mid-Ulster rivals for many years to come.

It was an exquisite moment. Regardless of what happens in the All-Ireland final, the rivalry between the two scrappy and perpetually antagonised south-Ulster counties has defined the summer of Gaelic football. Three times they met and on each afternoon, the games they conspired to produce simply seemed to weigh more than the other fare on offer in the championship - hurling or football. After 70 minutes of Armagh versus Tyrone, other encounters appeared frivolous in comparison.

That is not to dismiss the bulk of the championship but rather to emphasise that the particular rivalry is of the very rare kind that we may never be treated to again. The rivalry fermented for years in the sophisticated, hothouse environments of the Coleman Cup and the keen emphasis Ulster third-level institutions place on sport. It was deepened by the coincidental maturation of exceptional sportsmen from both counties and the fact both places possessed charismatic and brilliant managers in Joe Kernan and Mickey Harte.

The Border closeness and the common experience of a troubled, Nationalist existence gave the rivalry a suffocating closeness and a sharp, distinctive tang. And both counties managed to produce highly motivated and talented teams that peaked more or less in the same calendar year. Armagh-Tyrone was a happy coincidence of time and place.

To many observers, there was poetic justice in the fact it was Canavan that had the final say, whipping over the potentially difficult free with icy indifference, as all Armagh players knew he would. For the second successive season, they had been stopped short in their bid to spar with Kerry, the great aristocrats from the South.

Armagh against Kerry would, in the eyes of many, have been the fin-de-siècle final of a gripping and sometimes unsavoury era of totalitarian football, defined by absolute commitment. Beating Kerry in a second All-Ireland final would have forced even the begrudging voices to acknowledge Armagh's greatness. That the Orchard County had to embark on an expedition of Shackletonian ambition just to reach the point of an All-Ireland final, going from their league win straight into a broiling series of games against Fermanagh, Donegal (twice), Derry, Tyrone (twice), Laois and again Tyrone just deepened the fascination.

It has been rightly pointed out that is hardly Kerry's fault or concern that their passage to the September showdown was secured by the culling of Limerick, Mayo and Cork (twice). But it is the difference between climbing Everest with oxygen and climbing her without. By the conclusion of last Sunday's game, Armagh were gasping for breath and they knew that Canavan, the craftiest shark in the water, was not going to let them off the hook.

That climactic scene was reminiscent of one of those overblown and sentimental assassination scenes in the Mafia dramas. As Tony Soprano says to his childhood pal Big Pussy Bonpensiero shortly before finishing him off: "Hell of a way for it all to end."

And it was. That defeat at the hands of Tyrone leaves Armagh in a peculiarly vexing position. I believe, with five Ulster championships, one All-Ireland and a league title, they are entitled to acknowledgement of being a great team - but one that has not fully realised its greatness.

Joe Kernan was as magnanimous as ever last Sunday evening but that defeat must have hurt him above all others. The decision to withdraw Kieran McGeeney with seven minutes remaining will go down as perhaps the only mistake the Crossmaglen man made with Armagh but it was a significant one. Of course, there is no guarantee Tyrone wouldn't have stormed to a winning finish even if McGeeney had remained on the field. But it has been widely acknowledged by players across the land that McGeeney's mere presence, his shadow on the blades of grass, is a distraction to opposing players. We will never know.

In other camps, such a pivotal and controversial substitution might lead to recrimination and fallout. But Kernan had won games without McGeeney before and Armagh's success has been based on the fact that every one of them, even the skilled individualists, have unquestioning faith in the sanctity of the team. McGeeney may have been distraught by the decision, he may have been in a private hell as he watched the last minutes unfold from the sideline, but he will accept his removal from the front line in the spirit it was intended.

What I kept wondering this week was: what do the Armagh players do now? What do they do when their way of life is rendered so suddenly and dramatically shapeless, no longer governed by commitment to the cause? For some reason, I just cannot see Francie Bellew catching up on lost hours on the putting green or Oisín McConville sprawled over a sun lounge, pushing through a John Le Carre potboiler on the Costa. It is hard to think of them beyond the Armagh environment.

I half imagined them training on anyway, preparing for an All-Ireland final in their minds, like the Japanese soldiers who continued to battle in the second World War long after peace had been declared.

Joe Kernan has called on his players not to make any quick decisions about their futures with Armagh. The big man has put in many long winter hours himself with Crossmaglen and Armagh but it would be astonishing if he decided to step down given the nature of last week's defeat. And if Kernan returns, then surely McGrane, McGeeney, the McEntees, the McNultys, Francie and McConville will turn up at the appointed hour on some rainy field in Cross or wherever.

One last go. The reality is that their best chance has probably passed. Tyrone look better placed to extend the search for honours over the next couple of years. If anything, Ulster will be even more savage next summer. Derry are a coming force and Brian McIver might well harness the disparate talent pin-balling around Donegal.

Prolonging the quest is loaded with danger for Armagh because some day the very counties they have kept oppressed for the last half decade will sense the force is declining and will be in a position to destroy Armagh as remorselessly as Armagh have destroyed others.

But for the team to disband quietly in the late months of autumn would surely be against their nature. They rose up fiercely, against tradition and fashion. The upcoming All-Ireland final between Kerry and Tyrone is bound to be tight, hard-hitting, fiercely tactical, with the ball moving swiftly through players working to an absolute purpose. That style will be an indirect tribute to Armagh's influence.

We may have seen the best of them but they still have enough voice left to give it one last shout.