McGeeney welcomes McDonnell's Armagh appointment

Armagh's 2002 All-Ireland winning captain Kieran McGeeney has welcomed the appointment of Peter McDonnell as the county's new senior football manager.

"He is an excellent manager. I had Peter with Mullaghbawn and he is also a close friend so I'm going to be fairly biased," McGeeney said of the new Armagh boss.

"He is a first rate manager and an excellent coach - he used to coach me for athletics for the 100 metres sprint and stuff like that. He was a European Championship himself at Junior level.

"He is a fantastic athlete and a great man and I wish him all the best."

However McGeeney did express some reservations that Paul Grimley, who was Armagh assistant manager until 2006, will not be part of the Orchard county set-up after he resigned as Cavan assistant in order to pursue the Armagh job.

"I would have to say that I am very disappointed with the way the Armagh County Board treated Paul Grimley. Paul and Brian McAlinden are two men that I would have come across who have impeccable integrity.

"Paul Grimley is an Armagh man to the backbone like Brian but these things happen and that is the way life goes," he added.

The 34-year-old McGeeney is confident new man McDonnell can make his mark on the inter-county scene, having worked under him when Mullaghbawn won the Armagh county title in 1995.

"Peter knows his stuff and I suppose Mullaghbawn was very lucky at that particular time with a very, very strong defence. We had the two McNultys, myself and Neil Smith so out of your first seven, six of them basically were on the county squad.

"We were always able to deal with Crossmaglen's forward power but we probably wouldn't have had the same power up front ourselves. Peter was able to mould us into a team. When I first started playing for Mullaghbawn in 1986 we were in the fourth division but we came up to win it so it was a good achievement."

McGeeney denied that the appointment of Grimley would have guaranteed him a place in the squad as an 'elder statesman' and he sees the future as a bright one for Armagh football regardless of his own plans.

"Paul is not stupid either and everybody has a shelf life about the amount of time you can play for.

"We have younger players coming through also that are fantastic players, the likes of Kieran McKeever and Brian Mallon and Kieran Toner and all of those younger boys. They are going to have to be moulded into a championship winning team, but that can be done in a year," said the Na Fianna clubman.

"Everybody thinks it takes a number of years to build a team, some people have done it in a year and for some people it takes ten years.

"It depends on the willingness of the players and I think that bunch of lads have a great willingness. There are some fantastic players coming through and I think it shouldn't be too long and hopefully in the near future they do well."