Another chance for McGeeney to shake the 'unlucky general' tag

This weekend brings McGeeney’s third ever championship final in 16 years as a senior inter-county manager.

Armagh manager Kieran McGeeney after the Ulster SFC semi-final win over Down. Pic: ©INPHO/Laszlo Geczo

Finally, will this be Kieran McGeeney’s final?

If so, Pádraic Joyce’s outburst of defiance may just be repeated by his old International Rules team-mate in Clones on Sunday.

“It’s very hard to miss the articles in the paper that are written by one man picking out a record I have against Mayo,” Joyce told Off The Ball after a second win as manager in nine meetings with the old enemy. “There are plenty of records the far side of Mayo that lads haven’t won Connacht championships.” 

Joyce and McGeeney met in last year’s All-Ireland round-robin stage where Armagh made amends for the previous year’s quarter-final defeat. Afterwards, McGeeney sounded an awful lot like Joyce did last weekend. “I have a couple of fans out there that love talking about my management criteria, so I’ll leave (it) to them,” he said with tongue firmly stuck in cheek. “I’m sure it will be very complimentary.” 

Few would claim a McGeeney-managed team lack backbone. During his time in Kildare, no team were as impressive in the qualifiers. However, in six seasons they reached the Leinster final once and were beaten.

This weekend brings only his third ever championship final in 16 years as a senior inter-county manager. To end Armagh’s 15-year wait for an Ulster final last year was a welcome achievement but McGeeney had been at the helm for nine of those seasons and a coach to Paul Grimley for another.

Might he have reason to wonder if he’s an unlucky general? Since penalty shoot-outs were introduced to the All-Ireland SFC two years ago, there have been five shoot-outs. Armagh have featured in three (v Galway 2022, v Derry and Monaghan ’23) and lost all three.

People will put that down to not being good enough but that isn’t entirely fair nor was at least one call against McGeeney in his Kildare years. A rare bad decision by Pat McEnaney and his team in the 2010 All-Ireland semi-final contributed to Down winning through to face Cork. Benny Coulter, as he admitted himself, was in the small rectangle for a first-half goal.

The general consensus the following year was the winners of Leinster would come from the Dublin-Kildare semi-final. In the latter, referee Cormac Reilly is still considered the difference in that game, his decision to penalise Aindriú Mac Lochlainn for a trip on Bernard Brogan giving Dublin the would-be winning free. As per rule though, an accidental trip is a foul and Reilly’s judgement was backed by then referees’ development chairman Mick Curley.

At the end of March, just when it appeared everything was pointed towards McGeeney getting one over Jim McGuinness as manager in a knock-out game at the third time of asking, a bug swept through the Armagh camp, they had no pitch to train on and they lost the Division 2 final to Donegal by a point. The same difference it had been the two previous times in Croke Park against McGuinness.

McGeeney may be married to a Kerry woman Maura, who is also the Armagh team physio, but he wouldn’t strike you as a man for a piseóg nor one who would believe in bad fortune.

Perseverance is more his jam. As a player, he had to wait eight seasons to reach an Ulster SFC final before later winning an outrageous 10 provincial games in a row.

Still you can bet Armagh are rehearsing penalties this week.