ARMAGH GET JOB DONE ON STRANGE DAY
ARMAGH 0-15 DONEGAL 0-5
Richard Bullick at Stewartstown
Armagh secured their Senior Championship status for a 14th consecutive season with an efficient, committed and professional performance against Donegal in the Orchard outfit’s first ever relegation play-off.
Playing with the wind at their backs, Armagh made a flying start with five points inside the first eight minutes, added four more in a five-minute purple patch late in the opening period, took a 10-point interval lead and then shared the spoils in a low-scoring second half.
This season’s Orchard chart-topper Niamh Reel led the way with five points, her fellow doctor Caroline O’Hanlon contributed four while captain Lauren McConville kicked two monster scores and four other players raised a single white flag each.
Orchard campaigns generally end with the team being knocked out of the All Ireland race so finishing the season with a win rather than defeat had some novelty value, though this was a strange day which had a lingering sense of anti-climax mixed with a degree of relief.
This Armagh win was widely expected, providing their heads were right and their hearts in it, so the atmosphere afterwards was reasonably subdued, but these women who give so much to the Orchard cause continue to be a credit to their county and can hold their heads high.
The announcement later that night that the management team had stood down means there will be a new regime at the Orchard helm next season but hopefully all the experienced players will feel enough genuine grounds for hope to encourage them to commit again.
Third place play-offs at football or rugby World Cups are always talked about as being the match no team wants to play in because the shot at the big prize has gone, and the same applied to this tie in Armagh’s case, albeit there was actually more jeopardy involved here.
Admittedly the losers at the weekend knew there was the safety net of a second chance of clinching survival seven days later, but facing a showdown with Leitrim on July 12 of all dates would have been almost unthinkable for the orangewomen.
A dog-fight in Stewartstown wasn’t how the Orchard crew would have envisaged their year ending but, after Armagh’s earliest exit from the All Ireland race since 2016, it was important to put this season out of its misery as soon as possible.
A campaign which had promised so much initially as the National League title holders won their first five fixtures under new joint managers Joe Feeney and Darnell Parkinson to book a return to Croke Park, was holed beneath the waterline by a succession of injuries.
Previously indestructible Captain Clodagh McCambridge has to sit out most of the season, star turn Aimee Mackin managed just two brief cameos at the end, sibling Blaithin has been injured too and 2024 All Star Aoife McCoy missed the crucial clash with Kildare last time out.
Dearbhla Coleman, a 2024 Ulster All Star, was absent for the whole season, the luckless Louise Kenny has been sidelined again, her Shane O’Neills clubmate Moya Feehan sustained a year-ending injury, while others have had shorter lay-offs.
Even then, the Orchard challenge has been undone by hauntingly small margins in their All Ireland group games as Armagh lost a four-point lead late on in drawing with Meath in Navan and then couldn’t quite snatch a winning goal at the death as they lost at home to Kildare.
The Ulster champions came within a whisker of topping their group and getting a home quarter-final against Tipperary, which they would have been hot favourites for, but instead found themselves slugging it out with Donegal the same weekend.
As a side which had rightly been spoken of as All Ireland contenders, it was a tough fortnight for Armagh having to nurse broken dreams and get ready for what was arguably the hardest game mentally these players have faced, compounded by a crumbling backdrop.
This play-off scenario was a new experience even for the incomparable O’Hanlon, playing in her 24th season of adult inter-county football, but to their credit Armagh got the job done with the minimum of fuss against underdogs Donegal.
If this fixture was psychologically challenging for the Orchard side, by contrast it seemed perfectly set up for Donegal – managed by former Armagh gaffer James Daly – for whom ending up in these relegation play-offs always felt like a possibility this season.
As favourites, the pressure was all on Armagh and Donegal’s evident plan was to make life comfortable for their Ulster rivals, not least by being unpleasantly physical and exploiting any Orchard complacency or subconscious lack of stomach for this fight.
Talking of stomach, Armagh had one more bit of disruption to deal ahead of this tie with previously ever-present midfielder Niamh Coleman laid low with a tummy bug meaning a first start of the season for experienced campaigner Catherine Marley.
The other change to Armagh’s published line-up ahead of a start delayed by 15 minutes due to Donegal’s late arrival saw Ballyhegan’s Eve Lavery, who has been troubled by injury recently, coming into the starting team in place of Derrynoose young gun Caoimhe McNally.
Having missed the Kildare defeat, McCoy was fit to return but Blaithin Mackin, who only lasted until half-time that day, wasn’t named in the matchday 30, which may be a concern for her employers Melbourne Demons just a few weeks before the AFLW season starts.
Armagh knew they could make life easier for themselves with a fast start and, with the breeze behind them, they showed real intent right from the throw-in, which was won by that woman O’Hanlon.
There were a couple of very early wides but then Armagh went on a scoring spree which yielded five points in the space of five minutes, the first of them a Niamh Henderson shot tipped over the crossbar by the Donegal goalkeeper.
A ball broke to McCoy to raise the next white flag, Reel kicked a long-range score from out on the left, added a free after O’Hanlon claimed the Donegal kickout and roving wing back Emily Druse fisted over in the eighth minute to put Armagh five ahead.
There were three Armagh wides at one end and a Donegal shot into the side netting at the other before Reel landed an 18th minute free when McCoy was pushed in the back, and O’Hanlon then caught a dropping free from Susie White in her own goalmouth.
The next Orchard surge began with O’Hanlon kicking a longish free when McConville was fouled as she burst forward and the Crossmaglen legend then struck two stupendous points herself from distance out on the right either side of a towering wide by Lavery.
O’Hanlon nailed her second free to take the Orchard account into double figures and her third, well-judged from an acute angle wide on the right, restored Armagh’s 10-point lead going into the interval after Donegal had finally got on the board with a Jodie McFadden free.
It felt like a decent cushion turning into the breeze and so it transpired, even though Donegal did pull a couple of points back within two minutes of the resumption courtesy of McFadden’s boot and Cait Gillespie’s fist.
But the women in orange replied promptly, a good run and point by Marley – whose performance made it even more curious that she didn’t feature against Kildare, if fit – and another free from Reel restoring the double-digits gap on the scoreboard.
McNally came on for Lavery and, after the opposition pulled back a point through Katie Dowds, McCambridge replaced Maeve Ferguson before the end of the third quarter as Donegal and their hostile supporters became increasingly narky.
But the ferocious McConville never takes a backward step and O’Hanlon likewise was happy to compete physically for ball as well as bringing her great game management experience to bear on an afternoon when these stalwart warriors set the tone.
Frustrated Donegal skipper Roisin Rodgers got herself sinbinned through stupid indiscipline and Aimee Mackin trotted on to replace former skipper Kelly Mallon up front as O’Hanlon lined up another successful free.
Ace markswoman Mackin offered a glimpse of what Armagh have been missing by selling one outlandish dummy but the fact her subsequent shot went wide rather than bulging the net spoke to the rustiness which comes with 13 months out injured.
A couple of Donegal 45s came to nothing and, in an indication that Armagh were now home and hosed, Killeavy’s Laura Kavanagh and Clan na Gael prospect Lara Marsden got late runs in place of Megan McCann and Marley.
Reel cancelled out a free from McFadden with a set-piece strike of her own and the ball was in O’Hanlon’s hands when the final whistle eventually went. Armagh’s season was over but the timeless legend was back in action for her club Carrickcruppen that very evening!
Meanwhile, it remains to be seen if the Orchard camogs will try to recruit the formidable, multi-talented McConville as a wildcard ace as they try to finally get over the line in the All Ireland Junior Championship after a decade of coming up short.
ARMAGH: A Carr; M Ferguson, C Towe, R Mulligan; E Druse (0-1), M McCann, G Ferguson; C Marley (0-1), C O’Hanlon (0-4, 4f); L McConville (capt; 0-2), A McCoy (0-1), E Lavery; K Mallon, N Henderson (0-1), N Reel (0-5, 4f). Subs used: C McNally for Lavery (35mins), C McCambridge for M Ferguson (42), A Mackin for Mallon (52), L Marsden for Marley (57), Kavanagh for McCann (58).
DONEGAL: C Friel; S McFadden, A Temple-Asokuh, S McFeeley; B McLaughlin, E McGinley, C Gillespie (0-1); R Rodgers (capt), R McColgan; S White, K Dowds (0-1), F McManamon; A McDermott, J McFadden (0-3, 2f), N Boyle. Subs used: E Gallagher for McFadden (43), M Bennett for McDermott (43).
Referee: Anthony Marron (Monaghan).
