McGeeney wants Armagh to rediscover ruthless streak

WHILE Armagh’s performances have been fairly decent of late, the Division One league table tells a different story; manager Kieran McGeeney vows that his side “will just have to keep going.”

The Orchard County travel west this weekend to take on a Mayo side that have only tasted defeat once so far this season and are operating at the top end of the division under new manager Andy Moran.

Armagh, on the other hand, are concerned with the bottom end of the table, and they currently rest just above the relegation zone, with Dublin and Monaghan currently occupying the bottom two positions.

McGeeney’s men have suffered three league defeats on the bounce for the first time in his 12-year tenure, losing to Galway, Roscommon and Donegal by one point, three points and four points respectively.

“With all the top teams playing each other, there’s a lot of learning in it for us and we have a lot of young players that are getting good exposure, so we just have to keep going,” McGeeney said ahead of the Mayo clash.

The All-Ireland winning captain and manager was pleased with aspects of Armagh’s play last weekend against Donegal and a missed penalty late in the game from Oisín Conaty could have turned things in their favour. The 2024 All-Ireland champions are creating plenty of chances, but it’s the conversation rate in front of the posts that is their biggest concern at the minute.

“It was disappointing and frustrating because I think we’re playing reasonably well, I can’t say really well when we’re losing but we’re playing well for the majority of the games but we’re just missing too many easy scores.

“It’s frustrating that way. We had the chances again to win last week, and Donegal done very well of not getting many shots away while we did very poorly off a lot of shots.

“We’re creating good opportunities; there’s some lovely passages of play by the fellas. We had another three or four goal chances go a-begging and nine shots inside the 21-metre line that were either blocked or go wide, so it is frustrating.

“We managed to beat them in most facets (of the game) apart from the most important one which is obviously the scoring. It was more down to our errors; we’re missing scores even with no pressure on us so it’s important that we try to correct that.”