Armagh looking at the inner picture as they chase Croke Park glory

By Shaun Casey

THE only blot on Armagh’s otherwise perfect championship record is their round five home defeat at the hands of Laois and while Sunday’s All-Ireland final showdown offers a shot at redemption, manager PJ O’Mullan explains his side aren’t thinking along those lines.

The Orchard County are ‘controlling the controllables’ in the build up to the decider and that means focusing on getting their own team right instead of worrying about what the opposition might do.

Laois fired off five goals in that final round clash, while Armagh’s deadly attacking unit failed to raise a single green flag, the only championship game this season that they have failed to do so.

“Laois are a good team, they’re well coached and have good players. They have players that are playing ‘A’ level in colleges and ‘A’ level in university, so they are very talented,” said the Armagh boss.

“Up front they have very good forwards and a lot of pace, but I can’t worry too much about Laois. I don’t know how their training’s going, I don’t know what’s going on in their camp, we can only worry about our camp and try to get our players ready.

“We feel that if our players are ready and are as good as they can be then we’ll have a chance. If we take our eye off the ball and worry too much about Laois, then we’ll miss something in our own group. Well try to get our own group ready and see where it takes us.”

Armagh last won the Premier Junior All-Ireland final back in 2020, but due to Covid, there were no promotions that year. Final defeats to Wexford and Antrim followed in 2021 and 2022, and that experience should aid their cause.

“It’s a new experience for some of the girls,” O’Mullan added. “It’s a new squad and a young squad, some of the girls have been there before and some of them haven’t so everyone is just trying to embrace and we’re all looking forward to it.

“I think when we looked at the panel, there’s eight or nine of them that have played in Croke Park before so whatever experiences they have, good or bad, we’re trying to get them to pass on those learnings to the younger members of the group.

“We have plenty of older heads and younger heads, the younger girls have no baggage. Four of them have won an All-Ireland Minor title this year, the Granemore girls have won an All-Ireland Club title.

“We’re just trying to use the experience we have in our squad and whatever experience the management has as well to make the younger girls aware of what the surroundings will be like on the day and hopefully, they take it on board and push on.”

It’s been a good season so far for Armagh, who competed in Division Two of the league. Despite relegation back to Division Three, O’Mullan believes that playing at a higher level has brought his team on.

“The league probably came a bit soon for us, we’d probably own been together about six or eight weeks before the league,” the Loughgiel native continued. “I think if we’d have been getting it two months further down the line, I have no doubt we would have stayed up.

“Our performances, I think in the 58th minute of four of the games, we were a score down, so we were very competitive, and a wee bit of luck would have gotten us over the line in some of those matches.

“The competitiveness of it, the toughness of it, the speed of playing at that level, Derry got to the Division Two final, and we played them in the Ulster semi-final a couple of weeks after that and took them to extra-time.

“Offaly and Kerry are into the All-Ireland Intermediate final, and we played both of them, so those games were excellent. We had a couple of friendly matches thrown in there as well.

“We played Westmeath, who are in the Intermediate Championship, we played Loughgiel, we played Down so we’ve had really good games, and it was all with the purpose of Croke Park on the 10th of August.”

Armagh don’t have many injury concerns, although they are sweating on the available of Megan O’Callaghan, who received a red card against Laois last month.

“We have a couple of wee niggles but nothing serious. From that point of view, we’re all good. We have a suspension hanging over us and we’re fighting very hard to get Megan O’Callaghan cleared.

“It would be ludicrous if she misses a final for what happened that day. We have an appeal in and over the powers that be will take a look at it and a bit of common sense is used and we have her available.”