Rory Grugan hails Armagh's resilience ahead of All-Ireland football final

RESILIENT: Rory Grugan during an Armagh Media Conference ahead of the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship Final. Photo by Harry Murphy/Sportsfile

Bouncebackability became a phrase in the mid-2000s, appropriately when Kieran McGeeney was still plying his trade.

As a manager, his Kildare and Armagh teams have developed an incredible reputation for recovery. His Lilywhites team were the masters of the qualifiers after Leinster disappointments (they recorded an unbeaten run of 16 backdoor games).

This season, for the second year in a row, Armagh’s Ulster title hopes were dashed on penalties. For the second year in a row, they dusted themselves off to top their All-Ireland group and have now landed themselves an All-Ireland final clash with Galway on Sunday.

“The emotional strain of that defeat and in the manner of penalties is obviously hard to get over, but you have no choice,” says one of McGeeney's elder lieutenants Rory Grugan.

“It gets to Wednesday and Thursday of that week and you are back training properly and you have to park it.

“I think the way Geezer and the management talked about it was that, as hard as it was, it’s literally gone. It’s a new competition.

"It gets you into a certain group of four in the All-Ireland series but it’s a new competition and we approached it like that. Once we got over that win against Westmeath, it set us going and you just got on with it. It feels like a long time ago now.”

Grugan during an Armagh Media Conference ahead of the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship Final. Photo by Harry Murphy/Sportsfile

McGeeney’s attitude sounds similar to Brian Lohan’s who parked a third consecutive Munster final defeat to Limerick by resetting with a week off. Armagh enjoyed a couple of days’ socialising after losing to Donegal in May and returned renewed.

“Sometimes it can be a slight freshness of approach,” adds Grugan.

“If it’s a new player or two coming from the squad to become a starter, or if it is just over time with those difficult defeats, you build up a bit of character.

“What do you do? Do you throw in the towel and say, ‘Our season is going to peter out?’ Or do you push on and try to get to places you haven’t been.

"I think we have gotten quite good at that. We have built that resilience with a similar squad for a long period of time.”

Grugan’s first four years in the Armagh set-up garnered no win in Ulster.

“That was a challenging time in that early part of Kieran’s management stint, we weren’t winning in Ulster especially.

“We grew up as a team watching Armagh win Ulster titles and you probably got a bit spoilt in the 2000s that it was just the done thing, and we really wanted to get to that level, get a run in Ulster, because we know how much the Ulster championship means to us as a province, so that was always disappointing.

“It’s easy to say now after the fact, but it did always feel like we were trying to do the right thing and I’m sure you can find interviews with me saying where it felt like the players had let ourselves down, as opposed to how we were coached or how we were approaching games, and that we flopped on certain days and had defeats that we wouldn’t have been expected to lose.

“That’s why I always trusted that, and the ability we had to bounce back, beat good teams, and go on good runs, it showed that we were doing the right thing.

Grugan was 11 when he watched his beloved team lead by McGeeney lift the Sam Maguire Cup in 2002 for the first time.

“I was on the upper tier, I was with my cousin and I wanted to go down, and I ran over to my mum but she just wouldn’t let me go down, so I was gutted that I didn’t get on the pitch, but luckily I’ll be on the pitch this time.”