All-Ireland SFC semi-final: Armagh 1-18 Kerry 1-16 (after extra time)
All the pain was worth it. All those tight games that Armagh left behind them, all those knife-edges they fell down on the wrong side of, they were only purgatory in the end. Maybe it will only be worth it if they complete the job now but on Saturday night, in front of 55,548 of mostly their own fans, it didn’t feel that way.
Beating Kerry for only the second time in their history is its own thing. Beating them like this, coming from five points down on 47 minutes and sprinting clear from them in extra-time, buried so many ghosts. There was nothing meek or reluctant or nervy about them when the game was in the balance this time around. Experience is the name you give to your mistakes.“The big thing we took away with us at full-time of normal time was the amount of Kerry players that were obviously hurting and cramping,” said Stefan Campbell, scorer of two riotous points off the bench. “We’ve been there before, we knew what it took. It took us to hurt but we weren’t showing it.
“I think we won that psychological battle coming out for extra-time. We made the point inside – we’ve been there before and Kerry haven’t. They probably weren’t as battle-hardened as we were.”
That much was plain for all to see. Kerry faded out of this semi-final alarmingly the further it went on. After Paul Murphy’s goal put them 1-11 to 0-9 ahead in the 47th minute of normal time, they only scored five points in 48 minutes of football the rest fo the way. David Clifford, Jason Foley and Seán O’Shea all limped away from missed chances in the first extra-time, grimacing with various shades of cramp.
Kerry looked, in short, like a team that has been winning games all year by blitzing inferior opposition early and then seeing it out from there. Their average margin of victory in the groups stage of the Sam Maguire was 13 points, comfortably the biggest in the country. Derry fizzled out after an hour of the quarter-final. They haven’t been in a championship game where the result was in doubt down the stretch since last year’s All-Ireland final. They lost that too.
Armagh, meanwhile, know every nook and cranny of what these games feel like when the blood is up and every ball matters and there’s no room for second-guessing yourself. However bad it felt losing four penalty shoot-outs in three seasons, they were at least able to tell themselves that they didn’t actually lose any of those games of football. They outscored Kerry by 1-9 to 0-5 after Murphy’s goal here – you think they do that if they haven’t been down this road before?
“They showed great resilience today,” said Kieran McGeeney. “They’ve shown that over and over again and pushed every team to the limits. At different times, they just didn’t get over that line. As we were getting closer to extra-time, we were all going, ‘F**k, is it going to be penalties again?’ But the boys went after it.
“When you start in Division Three as a lot of our older players have, that understanding, that lack of hubris is a great thing to have in a set-up. Because they want to be coached, they want to learn and they want to push on. So the resilience, the openness to be coached on those finer nuanced details, to keep pushing on and trying those things. A few of them worked for us today, a few of them didn’t.
“But it’s a credit to the fellas. It’s a tough grind, some of those players have been there 10, 11 years. Armagh like most mid-level counties have those periods when you are trying to push on so I am delighted for them today, I genuinely am.”
The game itself was a thriller. Kerry took to the terms and conditions of the day so much better, bucking out to a 0-6 to 0-2 lead after 15 minutes. Armagh got caught in the headlights a bit and though they stuck in there throughout the first half of normal time, they still went in at the break 0-10 to 0-6 behind. Andrew Murnin had squandered the best goal chance of the day and it looked for all the world like Kerry would keep tipping away to see it out.
All the more so when Murphy got on the end of a Clifford shot that dropped short to put them five up with 23 minutes left on the clock. But Armagh were stubborn all day and when Barry McCambridge took a break from shackling Clifford on 55 minutes to slap home a goal of his own, the whole mood of the day changed.
Rian O’Neill landed three sumptuous points, Cambell was a menace off the bench. And though Dylan Geaney made his own entrance as a Kerry sub to push us to extra-time with his first touch of the ball, Armagh had all the momentum and it felt like a stay of execution. So it proved.
Afterwards, as McGeeney went around congratulating his players individually, he had a simple message for each of them. “One more,” he kept saying. “One more.”
One more than they’ve won in their history. A fortnight to get ready for it.
Bliss.
ARMAGH: B Hughes; P Burns, A McKay, B McCambridge (1-0); A Forker (0-2), P McGrane (0-1), T Kelly; N Grimley (0-2), B Crealey; J McElroy, R Grugan (0-1, one free), R O’Neill (0-3); O Conaty; A Murnin, C Turbitt (0-5, three frees). Subs: S Campbell (0-2) for McGrane (half-time). J Duffy for Conaty (49 mins), A Nugent for Crealey (57 mins), R McQuillan (0-1) for Forker (60 mins), O O’Neill for Murnin (62 min), J Óg Burns (0-1) for Turbitt (extra time), S McParland for Kelly (extra time), Turbitt for Nugent (80 mins), Conaty for Grugan (85 mins).
KERRY: S Ryan; T O’Sullivan, J Foley, T Morley; G White, P Murphy (1-0), B Ó Beaglaíoch; D O’Connor (0-1), J O’Connor; T Brosnan (0-1), P Clifford (capt; 0-2), D Moynihan (0-1); D Clifford (0-4, two frees, 1 mark), S O’Shea (0-5, one free, one 45), P Geaney. Subs: C Burke (0-1) for Moynihan (47 mins), K Spillane for Geaney (47 mins), D Geaney (0-1) for Brosnan (59 mins), G O’Sullivan for Ó Beaglaíoch (65 mins), BD O’Sullivan for J O’Connor (70 mins), M Breen for White (extra time), D Casey for Foley (78 mins), Steven O’Brien for D O’Connor (half-time, extra time), Sean O’Brien for Murphy (85 mins).
Referee: David Gough (Meath).
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