Allianz National Football League Division One: Armagh 1-23 Tyrone 0-19
BREATHLESS. Chaotic. And weirdly entertaining. A packed BOX-IT Athletic Grounds was enthralled by what unfolded on Saturday night between two arch-rivals.
A couple of the new rules may have bitten them down in Salthill last weekend – their woes undoubtedly compounded by the GAA’s failure to furnish them with an updated version prior to their NFL opener – but on home soil Armagh were simply sensational.
If there’s a team that can really profit from the FRC’s rule enhancements, it’s Kieran McGeeney’s team. Under this new-look version of Gaelic football, they have the tools to take out any team.
It mightn’t have been in their DNA, but the Orchard men won last year’s All-Ireland playing quite conservatively.
On Saturday night they put on a blistering show of vertical, counter-attacking football that a shell-shocked Tyrone couldn’t live with.
Their football had everything you desire in a team: urgency, pace, precision, clear-mindedness and bullet-proof confidence.
They carried the mantle of All-Ireland champions very lightly indeed - and the new rules were made for players like Ethan Rafferty, Ben Crealey, Andrew Murnin and Oisin Conaty.
In the helter-skelter of the evening, spare a thought for Blaine Hughes.
An All-Ireland winner who should have an Allstar on his mantlepiece, the Carrickcruppen man hasn’t put a foot wrong – and yet he found himself out of Armagh’s starting line-up.
In many ways, he’s a victim of the new rules.
Since the FRC has effectively anointed the raiding goalkeeper, Ethan Rafferty’s late inclusion on Saturday night wasn’t a huge surprise.
Even defeated manager Malachy O’Rourke tipped his hat to the uncontainable Rafferty.
The Armagh goalkeeper grabbed a pair of two-pointers and another point and was one of the main reasons Tyrone left the Cathedral City empty-handed.
“I’ve learned something about the rules every week,” said O’Rourke, an FRC member who helped conceive the new rule enhancements before assuming the Tyrone reins.
“I suppose the big one tonight was Ethan Rafferty coming up – he caused us a lot of problems. Other teams have complained about us with Niall [Morgan] coming up. As well as that, Rafferty has been an outfield player all his life and is very capable in those areas.”
But it wasn’t just Rafferty. It was Andrew Murnin’s fetching in midfield and getting on the end of attacking moves, including his palmed goal in the 21s minute.
It was Conaty’s directness and blinding pace.
It was Aidan Forker’s game management and his trademark shooting from distance that yielded one of four two-pointers on the night for the home side.
It was Rory Grugan’s calmness and brilliant decision-making in possession, particularly for the first half goal.
It was Conor Turbitt’s ability to find just enough space in the scoring zone to keep the scoreboard ticking over for Armagh while the fierce athleticism of young defender Tomas McCormack illustrates the crazy depth to McGeeney’s panel.
Armagh built up a wind-assisted and slightly deceptive 1-14 to 0-3 half-time lead, with four two-pointers forming part of that tally.
Their counter-attacking play was awesome at times – but Tyrone were authors of their own downfall in that opening 35 minutes.
Armagh’s pendulum-like defence didn’t show the Tyrone attack many gaps. Still, the Red Hands made too many unforced errors which their hosts punished severely.
O’Rourke added: “It’s very unforgiving if you go forward and you give the ball away, or you miss chances or you drop the ball short and a team as good as Armagh will punish you at the other end of the field.”
Tyrone just couldn’t hold Armagh back in the opening half as they began to stretch their lead when Murnin palmed home in the 21st minute.
Crealey broke Niall Morgan’s kick-out, Conaty kick passed to Rory Grugan and with the Tyrone defence outnumbered, the Ballymacnab playmaker put the ball on a plate for Murnin to raise a green flag.
Four orange flags followed for Armagh’s two-pointers from Rafferty (two), Forker and the impressive Ross McQuillan – all before half-time.
To their credit, and with the wind at their backs in the second half, Tyrone steadied themselves and made a decent fist of cutting Armagh’s 14-point half-time lead, grabbing four two-pointers themselves.
Darren McCurry converted two frees outside the 40m arc that yielded four points and Michael McKernan raised two orange flags in the 62nd and and 66th minutes, but Armagh were still pinching points at the other end to keep their rivals at arm’s length.
Kieran McGeary and Shea O’Hare gave good accounts of themselves while Eoin McElholm improved the Red Hands from the bench.
But the visitors were never likely to scale the mountain they faced after half-time.
Afterwards, McGeeney insisted he was enjoying all the positivity surrounding the new rules even if he felt there wasn’t a great need for some of them.
He also took the opportunity to aim a broadside at some TV pundits who regularly berated the old version of Gaelic football.
Wearing a roguish grin, McGeeney said: “I suppose the best thing for me is we’ve a positive PR machine behind it now instead of all the clowns on TV telling us how great they were and how bad everybody else is now.
“I’m delighted with that. I know people are trying to be more positive about it; I just think it’s a great game anyway.
“It’s still the same game. They’ve tried to change the structure of it with three up. I agree with the dissent rule...
“I just think the two-pointer (from a free outside the arc) is a huge penalty and doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
“From play, it’s okay but not from a free. And I’m not so sure the scores are any higher than previous years just as there were a lot of low scoring games in back in the game’s ‘heyday’.”
Armagh E Rafferty 0-5 (2tp); T McCormack 0-1, B McCambridge, J Hall 0-1; C Mackin, A Forker 0-2 (tp), G McCabe; B Crealey, R McQuillan 0-3 (1tp); O Conaty 0-1, R Grugan 0-1 (f), D McMullen 0-1; J Duffy, A Murnin 1-4, C Turbitt 0-4 (0-1f)
Subs S Campbell for R McQuillan (55), C McConville for R Grugan (66), J Og Burns for C Mackin (67)
Yellow card T McCormack (51)
Tyrone N Morgan; A Clarke, P Teague, N Devlin; F Burns, M McKernan 0-5 (2tp), S O’Hare 0-2; B Kennedy 0-1, L Gray 0-1; S O’Donnell 0-2, K McGeary 0-1, A Donaghy; D McCurry 0-6 (2tpf),M Donnelly, R Cassidy
Subs E McElholm 0-1 for R Cassidy (h/t), C Kilpatrick for A Donagh (h/t), C Daly for F Burns (45), R Brennan for L Gray (45), C McShane for M Donnelly (66)
Referee J McQuillan (Cavan)