Down out to end cosy Ulster cartel

WE’VE been here before.

Since Armagh and Tyrone last met in an Ulster final in 2005, one or other of Ulster’s ‘Big Two’ have crashed out of the provincial championship at the quarter-final stage.

The immediate result has been a raising of hopes elsewhere, a feeling that a window of opportunity had appeared for one of the other seven counties to break the ongoing duopoly and claim the Anglo-Celt Cup.