As Armagh selector Paddy McKeever took his seat for the post-match press conference, a Croke Park official sidled over to the assembled hackery and quietly informed us that Kieran McGeeney wouldn’t be doing any media. No biggie, obviously. McKeever is entirely pleasant company in his stead. Just out of curiosity though, Paddy, any reason Kieran isn’t up for sharing a few words?
“You’d have to ask him that yourself,” McKeever cracked through a delighted smile.
The winners get to do the jokes, as Abba should have said.
McKeever readily accepts that in making the quarter-finals, Armagh are at or beyond the line they set out to cross at the start of the year. Making it to the last eight was never anything to shout about for the team he and McGeeney played on. But the one they are overseeing is a Division Three side and will be again until at least 2019. Overcoming Kildare, who will play in Division One next year, is a fine achievement.
“Yeah, delighted,” he said. “We knew coming here it would be a step up from the Tipperary game. Kildare had put up a pretty impressive score against Dublin. We were watching it and they probably missed a good 2-4. So we were always going to have to score heavily.
“They had two, maybe three balls that hit the post in the first half and they had some poor wides. We were very clinical in the first half so we were probably lucky enough in that aspect and obviously the goal made a big difference. But then a lot of that has to do with the pressure that they were under taking their shots. A lot of our defenders were pressing them pretty strongly, so that probably had a lot to do with it.
“I suppose if you were setting goals at the start of the year, privately and realistically, this is probably bonus territory,” McKeever added. “But with each win, the confidence has grown within them, and the boys realise that there still is more in that team. They’re looking forward to pitting themselves against either the No 1 or No 3 best team in the country.”
An irritating habit
For Kildare this was a bad game to lose and a bad pattern to extend. Their recent record in Croke Park is nothing to shout about, even if, as Cian O’Neill pointed out afterwards, that has as much to do with the teams they’re playing here as anything else. Losing to this Armagh side is no disgrace; falling short when it matters again is starting to become irritating, however.
“Underwhelming,” was O’Neill’s response when asked how he would remember 2017 as a whole. “Division Two promotion was really fantastic for the group because they performed at a consistent period for a 10- to 11-week period. But then when it came to the league final, we underperformed. Then we had great performances against Laois and Meath, but when we got to a Leinster final against obviously a top team and we were probably a little bit disappointing that day as well.
“And then you get to this stage and it’s a match we felt we could have won and in many ways should have won and we didn’t. So we’ll take the promotion and we’re very proud of that, but I think everyone will be disappointed, because you don’t care about promotion when you’re in this season. That’s next year. We didn’t finish the season where we wanted, which is in the quarter-finals.
“I thought Armagh executed better than us. Just looking at the stats there, a lot of the numbers are pretty equal. I just thought they were more efficient in their shooting. The first 10, 12 minutes almost mirrored what happened in the Dublin game whereby we had a lot of chances that we would generally be tacking over the bar and creating a bit of distance between the two teams.
“And then a sloppy goal goes in and it is a blow. It’s not just three points, mentally it’s a blow. And it’s a pity because we were making lots of errors but still staying competitive. In fairness the lads regrouped at half-time and gave it a right good do in the second half. But we just couldn’t get that bit ahead of them. It felt like every time we missed a shot, they came down the other end and scored one. We just didn’t execute throughout the game, and that’s what cost us, I feel.”
