Armagh giants Crossmaglen inflicted a 1-08 to 0-00 defeat on a makeshift Dromintee side in a surreal club championship encounter at the Athletic Grounds on Friday night.

A number of players in the hastily-assembled Dromintee line-up opted to wear jeans and shoes in the fixture against the six-time All-Ireland champions.

Crossmaglen cantered to a comfortable 1-07 to 0-00 lead inside 10 minutes, as Dromintee’s rather too mature side predictably struggled without a whole host of regular starters who were attending a local wedding.

The match descended into more abject farce when Crossmaglen elected to treat the remainder of the match as an impromptu training session, with Dromintee engaging in an aimless kickabout.

Dromintee failed in a bid to have the match rescheduled and their motives for completing the fixture are thought to have stemmed from a fear of incurring a 48-week ban from all competitions at all levels if they failed to do so.

Speaking during the match to Armagh I reporter Manus Loughran, Crossmaglen joint-manager John McEntee (who operates alongside Oisín McConville) said: “The players opted to go to a wedding or at least a group of players did, maybe eight or ten players decided to go to a wedding, and collectively they decided not to bother turning up for the match. So Dromintee, had the not fielded, their whole club would be suspended for six months.

“And rather than having their juvenile teams thrown out of the championship, or suspended from football for six months, their committee members and a collection of guys from in and around Dromintee decided to come out and effectively humiliate themselves in front of an audience which is actually an absolute disgrace.

“They’re great fellas that they can come out and do that for their club, but to think that a senior team would embarrass them and their community, completely disrespect us and the county football structure as a whole is incredible.”