Still, they kept their hand to the tiller and rowed in behind McGeeney even when his first four seasons didn’t yield a single win in the Ulster Championship. Their progress has taken time and, as witnessed by the vote on the manager’s future last year, tested even the patience of their own people. But they kept on keeping on and their steadfastness has been rewarded.
Aidan Forker is Armagh’s longest-serving player. Having made his championship debut in 2012, he’s seen more bad days than good. Sunday will be his 56th championship appearance. He might not be in the final were it not for the intervention of Armagh’s subs against Kerry, Jarly Óg Burns chief amongst them. Burns was almost lost to Armagh for this season but in what has become a mark of this Armagh squad, the core of the group stayed together.
“I’ve been involved in a fair few conversations about important things that needed to be done and ironed out and sorted, I suppose, to get the collective as strong as possible and Jarly Óg is a big part of that for sure,” Forker said when asked about Burns’ plans to sit out 2024.
“I did talk to him early in the season about it. I think it was never in doubt he just needed a bit of time to himself. He’s steeped in the GAA, it’s part of his identity as a person being a footballer and I think he knows that now having had a bit of time off.
“But he’s invaluable to this group as you saw [against Kerry], a top person and top player, everyone knows that. He’s probably not getting as much game-time as he wants but that’s the way football goes and thankfully we have a brilliant group who are prepared to do whatever it takes for the group to be as best as it can be and win stuff so I think everyone has seen that to date.
“There’s a lot more like Jarly who made a decision to commit this year or last year or however amount of years to go and do something good. You know we have that opportunity now.”
There’s a sense at the Armagh media night that they feel they haven’t always been judged fairly. That their standing in the game was all a little too binary after successive penalty defeats in the Ulster Championship. For many, Armagh only arrived at the top table when beating Kerry last time out, but there’s a sense they feel like they’ve been there much longer than that.
“We know when it goes down the stretch we have been there, moreso than most teams, we have practised it a lot, we talk about it a lot,” Forker said.
“I think if we are in the mix in any game going down the stretch we know it is there for us and we know the quality we have. You can talk about mentality and you can talk about a lot of things around that, the media like to put it on to mentality and character.
“But I think it is sometimes down to first of all technical quality in the players we have and out-and-out physical attributes. Ross McQuillan just got the ball and ran past two people and scored a point, there’s no real tactics in that or mentality in that. There’s maybe a mentality in Ross in he’s direct but that’s in him and there’s very little coaching in that.”
Forker is a student of performance and how to deliver under pressure. Once one of Armagh’s go-to man-markers, he’s been pushed further forward and delivered two second-half points against Kerry at a time when Armagh couldn’t afford to ship any more water. On Sunday afternoon, he could be walking up the steps to accept Sam Maguire.
“Listen, everybody is human. How would you not daydream about that? You very quickly get yourself back to your KPIs and your process, as all the best sports psyches will tell you – get back to your process, back to your process. Because the outcomes sort themselves.
“So of course you daydream about it. But I’ve been daydreaming about it from when I was eight years old. That’s neither here nor there, we have to go and win a football match. I think all of that stuff takes care of itself.”
