Heroic Championship displays aren’t all about getting off to a good start; often they’re about getting over a bad one

It used to be the byword for success in the All-Ireland senior club championship was Nemo Rangers.

The way he has Crossmaglen Rangers playing should surprise no one who has ever known him.

A tempest or a treat — Portlaoise will be the scene of one or the other this afternoon.

IT WAS noteworthy just how Crossmaglen struggled to use their extra man when Ballinderry had Martin Harney sent off in the Ulster semi-final.

AARON KERNAN was incredibly honest in the bowels of the Hogan Stand yesterday evening.

WE should get a game today. The portents are good. These generations of Crossmaglen and St Brigid’s footballers subscribe to an attractive brand of play and on a wide open space like Croke Park with the forecast not too inclement there are reasons to be cheerful.

“I’VE not much left to say to ye,” laughed Oisín McConville as he greeted a congregation of journalists at last week’s AIB provincial player awards.

CROSSMAGLEN veteran Oisín McConville has made a thinly-veiled swipe at the club’s management last season, insisting current bosses Tony McEntee and Gareth O’Neill have brought back a more professional ethic into the senior panel.

BALL tucked tightly under his arm, Francie Bellew made his way into the Crossmaglen dressing room in Breffni Park yesterday with the broadest of smiles.

“TYPICAL Crossmaglen” was the refrain that carried on the chilly Cavan air yesterday afternoon.

Crossmaglen 2-9 Naomh Conaill 0-10

Crossmaglen Rangers (Armagh) 1-11 Burren (Down) 2-7

ARMAGH champions Crossmaglen Rangers dumped the reigning Ulster and All-Ireland champions, St. Gall’s, out of the running for successive titles with a brilliant 1-12 to 0-9 point win at Oliver Plunkett Park.

BOB DYLAN may have recorded the album The Times They Are a Changin’ in 1963 and released the title single the following year, but the sentiment continues to be appropriate, even in the world of Ulster football.

THE late Gerald Goldberg, Jewish Lord Mayor of Cork, lawyer and politician, was once asked rather pointedly by an interviewer if he had ever experienced prejudice in Ireland.

ARMAGH defender Aaron Kernan is hopeful that the long-running search for a new senior football manager will be done and dusted within the next fortnight.

EVEN searching for pictorial reference points has been futile. Seldom can such powerhouses of the game have so little recent history. That makes the questions harder and the available evidence less reliable.

WHAT must be going through the mind of Barry Gilleran this week?

BRENDAN O’BRIEN: My worst Injury...

MOST of them are only players in our minds now. On DVDs, decaying VHS tapes and in old photos.

THERE are so many questions about this game in Clones tomorrow, relating to the comparative strengths of a Tyrone team hoping to retain the All-Ireland football title at the third attempt and the short-term prospects for an Armagh outfit which has been weakened by a gradual drain of the best of their championship-winning side of 2002.

THEY have been judged by their failure to win more than one All-Ireland as much as they have their phenomenal record in Ulster but Armagh captain Ciaran McKeever is adamant that the thirst for provincial honours has not been quenched.

OWEN MULLIGAN has described the criticism of Sunday’s Ulster Championship tie between Derry and Monaghan as “over the top”.

BRIAN DOOHER cannot yet commit to lining out with All-Ireland champions Tyrone against Armagh on May 31, saying at yesterday’s launch of the football championship in Croke Park that while he was ‘not far away’, talk of him having a 50-50 chance of being fit might be optimistic.

SEÁN CAVANAGH described it as “the million dollar question” — and he wasn’t talking about Tyrone’s prospects of retaining their All-Ireland football title in September.

THE OLD-TIMERS up here have a saying; “There is only a while in anything and all good things must come to an end”.

IT’S BEEN a tough few months for wasteful spenders, and the backlash against squandermania continued in Croke Park yesterday.

Kilmacud Crokes 1-9

FIRST things first. Pat Gilroy’s recent comments that the All-Ireland club championship should be condensed into a calendar year are illogical, unfounded and unworkable.

FRANCIE BELLEW may have played his last game for Armagh.

A LOT has changed in the last year.

The Gaelic Players Association have unveiled the nominees for the 2008 Opel Gaelic Players Awards for football.

Ten players from Tyrone have been nominated for this year's Vodafone GAA Football All-Stars, which will be announced on October 15, two days prior to the All-Stars Banquet at Citywest Hotel.

Martin McGrath's efforts in driving Fermanagh to their first Ulster final in 26 years have seen him selected as the Ulster GAA Player of the Year.

BRING on the Dubs! Nobody was saying it on the record after this extraordinary result in Croke Park on Saturday, but Wexford are itching for the chance of redemption against their Leinster final conquerors at the end of the month.

WEXFORD fans will want to take more home from Croke Park this afternoon than the memory of a first ever championship meeting against Armagh.

LONG AFTER the invading orange masses had departed the St Tiernach’s Park pitch Armagh manager Peter McDonnell stood alone and surveyed the battleground, puffing on a cigar he’d saved for victory.

Cavan 0-13 Armagh 0-17

Cavan 0-13 Armagh 0-17

Armagh have received a major boost with the news that Francie Bellew will start for them in Sunday's NFL Division 2 league clash with Cork in Crossmaglen.

IN CIVILIAN life Ephie Fitzgerald is a schoolteacher, a man who knows the value of learning a lesson. No surprise, then, that the Nemo Rangers manager drew on the experience of previous years for this season’s All-Ireland club campaign.

Joe Kernan has officially ended his reign as Armagh senior football manager tonight.