By Shaun Casey

FRIDAY evening’s challenge game against Tyrone was the first time that new Armagh joint-captain Aidan Nugent lined out with his Orchard teammates since March 7, 2020.

That was a National League tie against Fermanagh that Armagh dominated, and Nugent top scored with 1-2.

Just as the Cullyhanna man was proving his worth at the highest level, disaster struck. During a summer club game against Grange, the accurate forward tore his cruciate ligament.

Injury forced Nugent to miss out on the remainder of Armagh’s 2020 promotion push and the winter championship that followed.

He remained sidelined during the Orchard’s first Division One campaign in over a decade as the 2021 season arrived too soon. He returned to form in the club championship however, racking up 0-15 across two games.

“That extra ten minutes (of county football) seems like an extra half an hour,” said Nugent after his first Armagh appearance in almost two years.

“I was flying in the first half but come the last 15, you could feel it coming, you could feel the legs cramping but it’s good to get the 70 minutes under the belt.

“Another few weeks training and maybe a couple of McKenna Cup games, hopefully we’ll not be too far away come the end of January.”

It’s no secret that recovery from an ACL injury is a long and mentally tough journey. But Nugent, scorer of 0-4 on Friday night, decided to “put the head down” and work his way back.

“When the injury was done, it was a bad one, but I took the mindset that what’s done was done. The longer I huffed and puffed about it the longer I was going to be out, so I just put the head down, worked hard with the physios and got into a good routine.

“Five or six days a week and I knew when I hit the pitch that I’d the work done so I didn’t really think twice about the knee when I was back. (I was) just trying to get that sharpness back that I had before it went.”

Not only has the St Patrick’s club man returned to fight for a starting place in a stacked forward line, but he will do so as joint-captain along with Rian O’Neill. Ciaran McKeever, a fellow Cullyhanna man and a coach in Kieran McGeeney’s management team, was the last player from the South Armagh club to lead the men in orange and white.

“We’ve two of them sitting on the sideline (former captains), you’ve Geezer and you’ve Ciaran. Any time you pull on the jersey it’s an honour and to do it as captain alongside Rian, it’s a good honour to get.

“It’ll not change a whole pile. I’ll still be fighting for my place and the same as anyone else, just the job of trying to drive the whole squad on a bit more. Hopefully that does the trick, and we just lead from the front.”

Being joint captains, will Nugent and O’Neill be forced into a good cop, bad cop scenario?

“Rian’s definitely the bad cop. I saw him at a few club games there, so I’ll take the good cop role.”