For two seasons in a row, they have picked their way through Ulster, the ultimate football minefield, to contest a provincial final while they will also play in an All-Ireland quarter-final for the third year in a row this term.
But they’ve shown the wrong type of consistency too. The All-Ireland quarter-final stage has been their Alamo for these last two seasons while they have never managed to get over the line in an Ulster final.
Baked into that run is the fact they’ve been on the wrong side of four consecutive penalty shoot-outs in big championship games, most recently in the Ulster final loss to Donegal.
It’s difficult to speak about Armagh football these days and not mention penalties. Speaking about the aftermath of the 2023 provincial final defeat, Aidan Forker remembered the mood in the camp after their defeat to Derry.
“It’ll live with me for a long time just how low I really was on that bus. And a lot of boys with me,” he said.
So how did they react when Groundhog Day came around again, losing this year’s Ulster final to Donegal on spot-kicks?
“I think if we felt low after last year’s Ulster final it definitely was lower this year after losing the second one in a row in penalties,” star man Rian O’Neill said at the launch of the O’Neill’s Continental Youth Championships which takes place in Boston in July and is the largest Youth Gaelic Games tournament outside of Ireland.
“I suppose we went back in the Tuesday night after and ‘Geezer’ [Kieran McGeeney] just sat us down and he said, ‘There are two options; feel sorry for yourselves and leave the season peter out or we can get back in the saddle and go again’. And I think everyone rowed in behind that we realised we weren’t a bad team, we were beat on penalties in an Ulster final.
“We weren’t beat in normal time we weren’t beat in extra-time. We know we still have a lot to offer in the championship so we got back on the horse and got ready to go again.”
To their credit, Armagh have bounced back and for the second year in a row, they topped their group thanks to a come-from-behind effort against Galway at the weekend. And by engineering the final score of the game to equalise, O’Neill suggests they are showing the benefit of their hard-earned experience.
“The first half we wouldn’t be happy at all with,” he said.
“I don’t think we made use of the wind at all and the second half we came out to try and get on top of them and they got on top of us. We just kept chipping away at points. We got the chance of a goal, we knew it would open up eventually and we took it and that gave us a new lease of life.
“And the subs came on and gave us a huge lift. And to finish it out the way we did – they went a point up and we came up and worked the last score which maybe we haven’t [done] in the past. So it was nice to finish it out that way get the draw and top the group.”
Armagh have the luxury of two weeks away from the action, a considerable boost in the helter-skelter calendar. And O’Neill has no doubt Armagh have the tools to go all the way.
“We’ve complete faith in the manager. He has a great backroom team in around him and he instils that belief in us that we’re there and we’re as good as what’s around. And we firmly believe that. But, at the end of the day, we have to show up in these big games and give a good account of ourselves and hopefully that’s enough.
“But if you’re asking if we believe, absolutely 100pc, yeah.”
