By Shaun Casey

In the past decade, across league and championship, Kerry have hosted an Ulster opponent at Fitzgerald Stadium in Killarney on 18 occasions. That’ll become 19 on Saturday afternoon when Armagh make the country-long trek.

Donegal, Cavan, Monaghan and Tyrone have all made that similar journey from north to south in that period and have headed home with little success. To date, Kerry have only lost three of those previous 18 encounters.

Monaghan did collect the two points on offer in the 2017 National League. Tyrone achieved likewise in 2022 to avoid relegation. Donegal of course recently made the lengthy trip and defeated the Kingdom in their own backyard in the opening round of this year’s All-Ireland series.

But more often than not, Ulster teams head back up the road with their tail between their legs and their heads in their hands. In the championship, Cavan, Monaghan and Tyrone have all suffered fairly hefty defeats to the men in green and gold.

Kerry hammered Cavan by nine last year in the preliminary quarter-final. The season before, they were ten points better off than the Farney County in the group stages. And who could forget when the Kingdom finally get one over their nemesis Tyrone in 2012, again picking up a double digits triumph.

Now, it’s Armagh’s turn to try their luck in Killarney. Kieran McGeeney’s men have visited Austin Stack Park, Tralee for league contests in recent years, but it’s the Orchard men’s first journey to Killarney since 2000.

The last two winners of the Sam Maguire lock horns with everything on the line. The winner will advance to the final eight of the competition while the loser will spend the rest of the summer licking their wounds.

How big of a role will Killarney play? It’s a voyage Armagh and Crossmaglen legend Joe Kernan made only once during his playing days, and never while managing the Orchard County, although he had plenty of tussles with the Kingdom.

“I only played in it once myself and it’s a beautiful stadium,” the Crossmaglen clubman recalled. “It’s sort of like a rose bowl and it’s a fantastic ground. If the weather is good, then there’s no better place to play and the atmosphere is going to be unbelievable.

“This is a game that both teams didn’t want but now that they have it, they can’t afford to lose it. Everything is at stake here – pride, honour, a place in the quarter-finals and to be honest, they are the game’s I love.

“There’s no next day now, so you just have to go out and do the job. The players will be chomping at the bit to get out there and show what they can do.

Kernan is also confident that Armagh can rise to the challenge of being in the last-chance saloon.

“I think the fact that it’s knockout will actually suit Armagh. The way the games have been, you can lose two or three matches and still stay in and that’s always weighing on the minds.

“Now, it’s all or nothing and I’m sure that’s what Kieran (McGeeney) would have said after the Louth game last week. Can they beat Kerry? Yes. Can they perform better than last week? Yes. Now, they just have to go and do it.”

Kernan feels that the large Armagh fanbase, one of the most fanatical the country, will spur the men in orange and white on and give them an extra boost despite playing away from home.

“Kerry and Dublin were always the teams we would have looked up to, and they were the big teams and the ones that were nearly always successful,” said the 2002 All-Ireland winning manager.

“Kerry are the kingpins of the whole lot and they’d say that themselves, but any team on any given day can be beaten and this is a fantastic challenge for our players to go down to Killarney.

He added: “We’re going to outnumber them in terms of support, that’s a certainty. Killarney is going to be full of Armagh people and we’re going to take over the county and from a players point of view, that’s a great motivation – to see that support and everyone getting behind them.

“Everyone was heartbroken after last weekend but that’s gone. Now, we have to go down to Killarney and enjoy the match and enjoy the weekend and hopefully come away with a win, but there won’t be much in it.”

Saturday will only be a ninth ever championship meeting between the two counties. Seven of them have been since the turn of the century. Outside of the 1953 All-Ireland final, Kernan has witnessed all the rest.

He played in the ’82 semi-final when Mick O’Dwyer’s legends were chasing the famed five in a row but came up short against Offaly. Kernan then guided Armagh to a first ever championship win over Kerry in the 2002 All-Ireland final.

The two counties have developed quite a tasty rivalry in the past few years. Armagh overturned the Munster men in the 2024 All-Ireland semi-final while Kerry gained revenge last summer at the quarter-final stage.

All those other clashes have taken place at Croke Park. Saturday is the first championship encounter outside of Jones’ Road, but Kernan has plenty of experience in heading to the Kingdom in search of victory.

He laughs about a league game in 2003, although played in Tralee, that showed the true Kerry mentality. Armagh had just beaten them the year before to claim Sam Maguire for the first time ever, and his old sparring partner Páidí Ó’Sé was the Kerry manager.

“I remember we went down the year after winning the All-Ireland and the bold Páidí landed into our dressing room. He welcomed us as the All-Ireland champions and congratulated us and wished us all the best.

“He was very honourable, but when he went out the door, I told our boys that they were going to get stuck into us and they battered us up and down all day!”

Killarney is a tough place to go, as Ulster opponents have discovered down through the years, but Kernan believes that if Armagh play to their potential, they can claim a famous victory on
Kerry soil.

“The injuries to the Kerry players who are coming back are significant – are they fully fit and will they last the game? That’s their problem and we have to test every one of them and make sure we push them to the limits.

“Push them to see who breaks because somebody always breaks during a match. You can pressurise somebody all day long and somebody in the opposition is going to break, but we have to be able to do that for 70 minutes.

“Both teams have plenty of scorers from all over the field, from defence to attack. All the half backs can score, all the midfielders can score, and I think both teams are going to go at it from the start.

“We cannot afford to let them go four of five-points up on us or it’ll be an uphill struggle. We need to be able to win our kickouts, get the ball up the field and create chances.

“I honestly do believe that we can win this, but we have to reach a level that we haven’t been at this year in terms of tackling, our fielding and the execution of our shooting, but that’s all within the capabilities of this team.”