First Round of the championship:The making and breaking of teams

Dear Editor,

This is a tale of two first rounds of the championship. 

I remember very clearly the Athletic Grounds, Armagh  in June 1977. It was half-time in the Cavan game and Armagh were five points behind and looking to go the way of Armagh teams around that period. First round executions were normal and this looked like normal service. I remember that the supporters did not appear unduly disturbed and seemed to acknowledge that this was the way things went, and at least they had paid their money at the gate and done their annual first round duty.

Then the second half began and a Colm Mc Kinstry goal and two Peter Loughran points brought things level and bit by bit, to the general astonishment of the supporters, Armagh surged ahead and finished strongly, winning by five points.

Sixteen years previously they had also defeated Cavan at the Athletic grounds and went on to contest the famous Ulster final of I961. But back to 1977. This victory did strange things to the Armagh footballers of that year. The first thing it did when everything settled down and Gerry O’Neill and his mentors and players realised that the county was actually into the Ulster Semi final, was to give an injection of self confidence that Armagh possessed many good footballers and should not be stuck in the doldrums.

The usual attitude-and excuse- that “the players are just not there” died away very quickly after that game and suddenly the line out took on a new glow. It was as if they had all gone through a ritual, an initiation rite, and emerged into a new order of things. Sixteen years of awfulness ended with that second half display and  hope grew and grew, culminating a month or so later in the first Ulster championship victory in 24 years and eventually reaching the All-Ireland final. First rounds do not so much transform as they remove doubt, and present possibility. They are like the source of a stream that can turn into a river or can trickle into oblivion.

Oblivion happened backing 1962. The Armagh side of that first round championship was largely the same as the side which showed such promise twelve months previous. But they should have known that Cavan at the time were dangerous when their pride is hurt. Armagh were soundly defeated. That defeat ended Armagh championship football for a generation. Everything disintegrated, the team of Gene Larkin, Danny Kelly, Jimmy Whan, Harry Hoy, Bertie Watson, Felix Mc Knight, Kevin Halfpenny, Brendan Donaghy and so on. Many had thought, and with justification, that there was an All-Ireland in that side and that it contained more talent  than the team of 1953.

But the first round defeat at Breffni Park in 1962 killed everything off, just as the defeat by Derry in 1955, 3-4 to 0-2, signalled the end of Armagh’s rise in the opening years of the decade. They just stepped off a cliff and vanished .

We won’t go into the debate that the GAA authorities by the nature of the knock out system had denied the sporting people of Ireland a real opportunity of playing Gaelic games at a high level, and that this was the major reason for so much frustration in so many counties. Sixteen counties at every level in both hurling and football had only a single championship game every year. This position in itself led to the critical nature of first rounds, instant hope or instant despondency.

Back in 1991 at the Marshes, Armagh and Down stood at the source of their championship stream. A one point victory by the Mournemen in a low key, low standard match put Armagh back into their tenth barren year of waiting for an Ulster Championship, but turned into a torrential river for Down who went on to win the All-Ireland that September and who repeated the feat three years later in 1994 with largely the same team.

Still thinking of next Sunday’s game against Tyrone in Clones, I recall the first round in 1978 at Breffni when the Cavan revenge factor repeated itself and the All-Ireland finalists from the previous year were beaten as thoroughly as their predecessors in 1962. That defeat put Armagh on the back foot for two years and it was not until 1980 that the team regained their composure and confidence and took the Ulster title again against Tyrone. The Armagh team of 1977 would have went the way of the team of 1961 had it not been for the fact that good structures had been put in place to make sure that training continued, and the team held together.

In the modern game, the drama of the first round make or break factor has been changed by the back door system. Under the new system, a second chance to trigger off a surge of success presents itself such as  happened  to Tyrone last year when they were beaten by Down in the first round replay but were given a second wind  went on to win one of the most celebrated of all All- Irelands.

It is strange to realise that under the old system, all that vast potential would not have been realised and the team would have been written off as over the hill and the end of an era and all that. It is hugely obvious that the primacy of the knock out championship  system has killed off the potential of county after county down the years and that the GAA officials have stood by and watched this disgraceful championship make up, with a further injustice piled on it by the provincial system. How many potential Tyrones did it kill off in the past hundred years?

But as we turn our eyes toward Clones on Sunday next, the back door presents a sort of No Mans land. Getting over the first round does not provide the old potential for growth any more. The potential has moved to the losers because of a more lucrative path to ultimate success for it is now largely the case  that to win a provincial championship is the road to nowhere, while the defeated first round teams can avail of the scenic route. This has naturally developed  to give  traditional strong sides a second chance in case of a early slip up.

The real winners and losers of next Sunday will not be known until later in the championship. But there are a few pointers in the present Armagh team and panel which tend to reveal if there is a realistic chance of genuine progress.

The first point to make is that this Armagh team is right in the middle of serious transition. No matter what way we look at it, the old momentum of the past decade is dead and gone. Last year we had the momentum to freewheel to an Ulster championship, but that was as far as we could go and began the slide backways against Wexford. Armagh are at the starting line again, but supporters should understand that transition is like quicksand. The energies of management are spent in redrafting and changing basic and fundamental things and this is the most difficult and thankless task. Ask the Down mentors or those of Kerry in their 12 barren year years after the age of O Dwyer’s success. It’s fifteen years since Down last won an Ulster title, the year of their last All-Ireland. Dublin are struggling annually to make a fresh All-Ireland breakthrough but it doesn’t happen for them. Fourteen desperate years have passed for them since 1995.

The Armagh midfield has taken a battering in recent months. Potential player after player in that department has fallen short of expectation and the injury to Charlie Vernon has left serious problems for Peter Mc Donnell. There had been talk of new successors to Paul Mc Grane but the truth is that there is no successor on the horizon. We have many six foot three and six foot four  players throughout the county, but so far none have shown the athleticism required to compete with Ireland’s best. We have to ask why. It seems as if none of these are developing or are being coached in the high arts of the game. There is potential, but that’s as far as it goes.  In the Under -21 games and recent league games, Armagh’s midfielders are simply not getting off the ground, not competing in the air. When Mc Grane and Toal were in partnership we had the perfect mix of boxer and fighter in the middle.

Such a force does not now exist and this is where the transition is hurting most. Peter Mc Donnell can not overnight create a new all powerful midfield and Vernon’s injury has further depleted things, so we are reduced to the hope that something will bud against Tyrone and blossom from there.

I have often pointed out that the Rangers situation with their unprecedented success adds an extra burden on an Armagh county manager. After the Mc Kenna Cup and early league games, the availability of Crossmaglen players, rather than adding strength, adds a measure of  confusion and resentment because it means that players who had been working to get their championship places are suddenly discarded. Anybody with an ounce of common sense can see this. Every county from time to time has  to sort out the club /county  scene when in happens, but apart from some team in Connaught, it has never happened 13 years in a row!

There is no doubt that there are some  very good players in Rangers who deserve a county place, but this does not cure the lousy position endured by a county manager who is now trying to get a settled team in the mouth of the championship. This is an annual situation and it has been a serious obstacle. There is not doubt that in the All-Ireland years, Oisin Mc Conville, the Mc Entee’s and Francie Bellew were superb Armagh servants as was of course the Armagh manager himself, Joe Kernan. But year after year has taken its toll, and Peter Mc Donnell has suffered accordingly.

There are a lot of very good footballers on the present Armagh team.  The fact that Tyrone are the opposition will lift things considerable and there is now a second chance with the back door to create a new momentum.

I think again back to 1977. There were lots of good players in Armagh then but they never gelled as a team until the second half against Cavan. Something happened. A mixture of belief, the discovery of a basic system of play, a freshness to the higher reaches of the game, something was born in that hour that lasted for several years, and in many ways has lasted until the present time. I think supporters heading to Clones on Sunday next should have a mixture of balance and expectation. Just like the team.

Peter Makem.