Armagh and the All-Ireland quarter-final – a Rubik's cube that Kieran McGeeney has been unable to solve in his 10 seasons involved with the team.
Red side heartbreak, blue side drama, green side comedy hammering – if you’re a Tyrone fan anyway – you get the picture.
Having won three All-Ireland quarter-finals from five as captain of the Orchard County, McGeeney enters Saturday’s Croke Park showdown with Monaghan hoping to improve on the 0 from 3 record since agreeing to join the management team in 2014, first as head coach under Paul Grimley and then as manager the following season.
It's fair to say that it's one of the biggest days of his pretty special sporting career.
McGeeney’s relationship with Armagh’s fanatical support is a peculiar one. If that quarter-final losing run stretches to four against Vinny Corey’s side, his future will really be under the microscope. It already is for some.
The most famous player to ever don the jersey, the first from the county to lift Sam Maguire and generally accepted as the face of Joe Kernan’s history-making 2002 side. Yet a large swathe of the support just aren’t jiving with him right now.
"Sure yon’s won nothing in a decade" they protest.
Eh, do Division 3 titles in 2015 and '18 not count, this writer walking rather than boating through a flooded Venice to find a bar showing the latter? And who of us could ever forget the O’Fiaich Cup final of December 2016 when Tyrone were cruelly put to the sword and sent back over the Blackwater with faces reddened.
Armagh used two goalkeepers that day, Patrick Morrison and Mattie McNeice, but it was a future one who stole the show with Ethan Rafferty helping himself to 2-03 just a stone's throw from the aptly named O’Fiaich Square in Crossmaglen.
In a photo of the low-key trophy presentation to captains on the day Aidan Forker and Rory Grugan, Joe Kernan is walking behind the pair.
Comhghairdeas to @Armagh_GAA on becoming #OFiaichCup Champions 2016! pic.twitter.com/cWhw6NMS5y
— Crossmaglen Rangers (@crossrangers) December 18, 2016
In essence, his shadow still looms over Armagh and certainly his time in charge has muddied the expectations of the GAA’s greatest fans 〈™〉.
In Kernan’s reign from 2002 to ‘07, Armagh won an All-Ireland, reached another final and won four Ulster titles. Peter McDonnell reclaimed the Anglo Celt the following season before stepping aside the next year after a qualifier loss to Monaghan citing "forces at work that were undermining us at every turn". He is still the last Armagh manager to win Ulster though.
The ‘noughties’ really skewed Armagh’s position in the game and for some fans, their expectations.
Greater heights are achievable certainly, but Kernan walked into a changing room that had claimed back-to-back Ulster titles while he had guided his native Cross to the top of the club game. Ulster minor titles arrived in 1992 and '94 while a first-ever Ulster under-21 title arrived four years later and an All-Ireland title at that level in 2004 didn't hurt either.
Now look at the record of Armagh at county and club level over the last decade.
One Ulster final appearance, one U20/21 provincial final appearance, one minor final appearance - all unsuccessful. At club level, one Ulster Club senior final appearance and none at intermediate or junior level.
After the first of those three All-Ireland quarter-final losses and before he could even don the bainisteoir bib, Aaron Kernan, Brian Mallon and Philip McEvoy retired. Finnan Moriarty departed the following season. The experience of the side gutted, a rebuild from the off.
That first defeat was a one-point loss to Donegal in 2014, a more than credible performance given that Jim McGuinness’s side were a heavyweight whereas Armagh were punching in the middleweight division. Donegal would famously go on to shock Jim Gavin's Dublin in the semi-final.
Armagh had developed a siege mentality going into that Donegal clash, claiming disrespect as the reason for an almost blanket media ban with two interviews granted during the latter stages of their championship run.
They led by a point heading into the stretch, the game warmed up by Aaron Findon throwing the Donegal medic, who had unwisely entered into a skirmish between the teams, to the ground [Findon rang to apologise] and Grimley and Donegal defender Eamonn McGee getting involved in a bit of barging on the sideline. The smart money was on ‘Grimbo’ but the pair were laughing and hugging like best pals walking off.
Quarter-final two came three years later and a week after what was perhaps the big bang moment for the GAA’s greatest fans 〈™〉.
In the last qualifier round, they were handed a rare Croke Park date and played the underdog role against Kildare. On an evening when the not so old ground crackled, Andrew Murnin – who'd spend the next lock of years hampered by conniving hamstrings – got the goal in a 1-17 to 0-17 win in front of a massive Armagh support. The final few seconds, with their supporters celebrating as the clock ticked down, felt special.
Belief surged for the quarter-final with Tyrone a week later but the Armagh defence was more open than the heavens as the Red Hands sauntered to a 3-17 to 0-08 win. An 18-point victory and, more importantly, revenge for the O’Fiaich Cup final loss nine months earlier - the Red Hand players could show their faces around Omagh, Cookstown and Strabane once again.
Then of course came last year’s epic, thrilling, scintillating but ultimately heart-breaking, penalty shoot-out loss to Galway. An ugly melee at the end of full-time will always leave a black mark hanging over it, but the noise of the Armagh support will live long in the memory as they produced a stunning comeback in normal time, Aidan Nugent and Conor Turbitt with goals and Rian O’Neill with that free-kick.
Now McGeeney has a chance – perhaps the best yet – to finally take Armagh to the semi-final, what would be their first since the 2005 epic against Tyrone.
For a section of Armagh fans, not all of course, if they lose on Saturday it will be down to the manager and if they win it will be because of the players.
But there has to be an acceptance there too that McGeeney has put together the best panel of players available to him. Nobody’s walking away, despite imagined WhatsApp rumours to the contrary post league, nobody is sticking to the club for the season.
Ciaran Mackin was on nobody's radar as a county standard player until McGeeney saw something. He’s now been talked about as a potential All-Star should Armagh win.
The Ethan Rafferty experiment has wobbled a bit this season, but overall it’s added a new dynamism to their attacking play.
Andrew Murnin’s heart lies with his club St Paul’s, but it’s because of McGeeney that he’s been one of the stars of the championship.
There’s been plenty of good to go with the, at times, warranted criticism.
Armagh fans travelled in big numbers for their final group game with Galway in Carrick-on-Shannon, but not in the hordes we have become accustomed to.
Those there were treated to something Armagh have been accused of not being able to do – beating a big team and winning a tight match.
That looked in jeopardy as Aaron McKay channelled his inner Leeroy Jenkins and bull-dozed through team-mate Stefan Campbell to get the ball, clipping Galway’s Cian Hernon on the way past and giving away a scoreable free.
It felt like another McGeeney hard luck story but this time, fortune favoured him as Shane Walsh missed the target, the consequences becoming even more clearer in Sunday’s defeat to Mayo to end their season. A bit of fortune for McKay too who had delivered his best performance in what has been an excellent campaign for the defender.
That win guaranteed an eighth All-Ireland quarter-final for McGeeney as a manager given that he had five with Kildare.
Of the seven losses, two came after extra-time, while there were defeats by one, two and three points.
The exception was with Kildare in 2010 when a provincial rival beginning with the letter m – Meath – were defeated. How McGeeney would love history to repeat itself again this weekend.
Former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger took plenty of stick for his view that the top four was akin to a trophy in the Premier League, but he finished there in his first 20 years in charge of the London club and that sort of consistency is admired in retrospect.
McGeeney has been a reliable top-eight manager, but the time has come to break into that GAA top four. If he does, maybe in retrospect what he has done will gain a bit more admiration too.
Watch the All-Ireland quarter-finals on Sunday, Derry v Cork and Dublin v Mayo on Sunday from 1.15pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player, follow a live blog on RTÉ.ie/Sport and the RTÉ News app or listen to live updates on Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1
