By Niall Gartland

THE clouds have lifted after a difficult league campaign and Monaghan are all set for Sunday’s Ulster Senior Championship showdown against Armagh at Clones.

Gabriel Bannigan, now in his second year in charge, acknowledged that their ill-fated Division One campaign was difficult for all the protagonists involved, but the silver lining was that a batch of relative newcomers became acclimatised to the demands of competitive football at the very highest level – even if it was still a chastening experience.

The return of more experienced heads has coincided with a memorable journey to Sunday’s final, overcoming old foes Cavan before a remarkable come-back victory over Derry at the last-four stage.

Taking us through their resurgence, Bannigan said: “I was very honest during the league after every match, it wasn’t easy managing throughout that period and I felt for the players because they were working really hard in training

“It’s difficult making your debuts in the league when there are so many new faces together, particularly in Division One. It was a really tough learning experience for the new lads, and it was tough on some of the more established players as well.”

“One of the things I noticed during the league was that some of our best players were playing nowhere near their best. That’s understandable because there was so much inexperience and we just didn’t have the cohesion we’d had last year.”

He continued: “I think we saw signs of it coming towards the end of the league, and signs against Cavan as well. In Galway in the first half we were very flat, but in the second half we were excellent. Then we went to Round Seven against Donegal in Clones and we played very well, we pushed them very close, and then they went out and demolished Kerry a week after that.

“That performance against Donegal was encouraging, and we knew we had players back in training. We had seven men back in the squad for Cavan who didn’t start in the league – three of them started, four were on the bench, and then we started two more against Derry, Conor McCarthy and Killian Lavelle. So it’s gradually got better and better.

“I’m on record as saying some of those players we got experience into during the league have benefited from that — Cameron Dowd, Daragh McElearney, Oisín Gorman, Robbie Hanratty. Would those boys have made the same impact in the championship if they hadn’t featured in the league? Probably not.”

Armagh are fancied to clinch their first Ulster title since 2008 and understandably so when you consider the massive scorelines they’ve racked up in recent weeks. Can they be curtailed?

“Yeah, look, we will, as we do with any game, we’ll look at Armagh. We’ve already looked at them a fair bit. There are threats coming from all over. They’re a very athletic team, and the speed at which they covered the ground against Down, Down were chasing shadows at times.

“They have serious firepower from a range of areas. Scoring 3-33 is a record against a team that beat Donegal the previous week and also put up a huge score against Fermanagh as well. Armagh are humming and are raging hot favourites for the final on Sunday week.

“We’ll give them due respect in terms of our focus on them, but we’ll also be very much focused on ourselves, our own performance, and from my perspective, getting the best from our players and team.

“It’s a final, an Ulster final, a huge crowd, hopefully there’ll be massive noise. It’s a local derby, so yeah, I’d be hoping we’re going to start better than we did against Derry. If we get the start we got against Cavan and the finish we got against Derry, and put those two halves together, I’d like to think we’ll give Armagh a game.”