Our game hasn’t been pretty but it works, says Marsden

THREE years in a row, Armagh footballers watched from a distance as the three teams which knocked them out of the championship race advanced to take the All-Ireland title.

However, according to Diarmuid Marsden, the players never lost heart. They never gave up hoping. And for him, personally, qualifying for Sunday’s All-Ireland final marks “the culmination of 10 years of hard work”.

“I suppose it’s what we have been thinking about all our lives. It’s what you would always have dreamt about,’’ he said. “At the same time, we know it’s going to be a formidable task. Down through the years Kerry have always produced good footballers and this year it’s no different. There’s quality all over the field. We’ll have to be at our best to counteract that.

“It’s hard when you see teams beating us, like Galway last year, Kerry in 2000 and Meath the year before that. So that’s three years in a row we have had to watch teams go on to achieve the ultimate. Now it’s up to us. We have put in a lot of hard work and we’re aiming to go that one step further.’’

Marsden doesn’t deny that there were times when he would have asked himself if he “had had enough”.

Behind it all, though, he says he never doubted the team’s ability to make it to a final.

“Definitely, we have always had that belief that we could do it. We have a team of good quality footballers. I know it’s a cliché, but it’s all about doing it on the day. It will still come down to that, it will be the team that produces it on the day that’ll take the cup home.’’

He learned that hard lesson a long time ago. At the age of 17 he was on the losing side in the All-Ireland minor final of 1992 against Meath. “It was a big thing to get to an All-Ireland final and play in it. Unfortunately, we didn’t perform on that particular day, but it was a great occasion, definitely something to cherish. It was tough, especially because we lost through a goal in the last minute.’’

Interestingly, he remembers little of what happened in the senior final, when Donegal made history by winning the Sam Maguire Cup for the first time. “To be honest, it passed me by. Manus Boyle got man-of-the-match. I watched the game but I never even noticed him scoring eight or nine points. I was just dumbstruck by the whole occasion.’’

Earlier this summer Armagh went on a much-publicised trip to Spain. It was the idea of new manager Joe Kernan, who has taken over from Brian Canavan and Brian McAlinden who had managed the team jointly over the previous six years.

“People slagged us off about it being a holiday, but it certainly wasn’t. We had two training sessions a day, along with pool work and video analysis. It was good. It was enjoyable. Looking back, it probably had the effect of bonding the players.’’

Much more significantly, he says that Kernan brought a freshness to the set-up; a freshness that was needed because “it was going a bit stale”.

“You see Sean Boylan going on for his 21st season with Meath, but I think it was good for the team that there was a change.’’ At the same time, he stresses that “the two Brians” were just as professional in their approach.

Looking ahead to Sunday’s final, he doesn’t believe that Armagh are under extra pressure to win their first title.

“That’s pressure you put on yourself. We are there. We have all the work done. Now, it’s all down to how we combat Kerry. They are a formidable outfit and we would need to be at the top of our game if we are to win.”

He offered the interesting view that Armagh played better against Sligo than they did in their semi-final win over Dublin. Many observers would take the opposite view.

Sligo were under-estimated to a certain extent, he feels, even by Armagh themselves to a certain degree.

“We knew they were definitely a force to be reckoned with. Looking back, they were a fine side. We had to up our performance to get through that game. I thought we played some good football in Croke Park against Sligo, maybe better than we did against Dublin.

“Against Sligo we probably took our eye off the ball for 10 minutes and let them get back into it. We decided to ‘hold off’ in Navan and basically do what we had to do.

“You have to play your next game as if it could be your last, as if it’s going to be your best game. To some degree, the fact that our next game is the All-Ireland final, some people might look on it as a last hurrah. To us it’s just about going out and doing the business.

“Kerry seem to have improved in every game from the Cork defeat in the Munster championship. Maybe Cork weren’t as ready for them as they should have been and maybe they regret that. I think there is still a lot left in Kerry. They are the ultimate professionals in Gaelic football.

“I wouldn’t say we have reached our peak, but we have played some good football through the year. It mightn’t be the prettiest, but it has been effective. Obviously everyone would love it if we went out and played lovely flowing football and made lovely scores. But at the end of the day that doesn’t come into it for the players.

“It’s about the result at the end of the day.’’