Keep Cross epitaphs on hold, warns McConville

Over three years have been lost since Tony McEntee last donned Crossmaglen’s famous black and amber stripes but, with his boyish features and chiselled physique still in evidence, the club’s current manager can still pass for one of his players.

Never more so than on Saturday afternoon when he slung a kitbag over his shoulders, slipped a hoodie over his head and joined the procession of disconsolate faces who filed out of the changing-room and past the unsuspecting media. He was almost out the gap before one scribe spotted him but the request for a minute of his time was dismissed with an apologetic wave of the hand, the pain of his first ever championships defeat in a term spanning three years all too raw.

It was only when Oisín McConville emerged some minutes later that a window was opened into the Crossmaglen soul after their hopes of becoming the first club to claim three successive All-Irelands titles had been foiled at the second last.