Kernan backs Orchard to bear fruit again after years of regret
THIS weekend 12 years ago what was considered as almost a routine step forward turned out to be one that sent Armagh football plunging over the cliff edge.
When Peter McDonnell’s team defeated Fermanagh in the 2008 Ulster final replay, they were not even the story.
Instead the narrative was about how Fermanagh had let slip their chance of winning a first-ever provincial title in the drawn game, and how in the aftermath of the six-point (1-11 to 0-8) replay defeat, the Erne men would disappear into oblivion.
After all, what was the news value in Armagh winning a seventh Ulster title in 10 years? Same old, same old.
Who could possibly have foretold back then that not only would Fermanagh be back in an Ulster final before Armagh — which they were in 2018 — but so would everyone else.
It may be a funny old game, but when the joke is on you the laughs are hard to find. Aaron Kernan picked up his fourth Ulster medal that afternoon — his third as a starter — and with a career spanning out in front of him full of possibilities and glory, the future was orange.
Instead, at county level – he remained a serial winner with Crossmaglen who he is still with – short summers and long inquests would set the rhythm for the remainder of his career which he called time on six years ago.
‘The thing is we won an All-Ireland Under 21 in 2004, an Ulster minor in 05, another Ulster U21 in 2007 and an All-Ireland minor in 2009. Throw in lads who also won MacRory and Hogan Cups and we had a conveyor belt of young coming through allied to established players at senior level who were used to winning Ulster titles and competing at All-Ireland level.
‘When you throw all that into the mix, to think that we have not even reached an Ulster final in that time is very disappointing, so, no, I could not see that coming,’ he admits.
Including Wexford, who within 13 days had laid Armagh out cold in what was deemed a shock but was later revealed as the start of a long, steep decline.
There were a number of factors at play but the loss of Ronan Clarke to injury was as big as any. An outrageous talent — as with Kernan in 2005, he was Young Player of the Year in his rookie season in 2002 — but 2008 was in effect his last full season as dogged by an Achilles injury, his career spluttered to a stop three years later.
‘He should have been coming into his prime around 2009, 2010 and 2011 but unfortunately injured robbed us of him.
‘Without a doubt he would have been a focal point for us. It was a huge miss because we had Stevie
McDonnell playing with us until 2012 and Jamie Clarke was breaking onto the team from 2010.
‘Had we those guys operating in the same line together, anything would have been possible, and that is what we needed to be competing at the very top.
‘Forwards are match-winners and there is no getting away from that. No matter how complicated people can try and make the game that is a core truth,’ says Kernan.
It is also one that has been borne out in the last and lost decade, but that could be about to change.
Of all the reasons that Armagh have to feel good about themselves right now, the form of Rian O’Neill is perhaps the most potent. They have not had an attacking leader quite like him since Clarke. In his first Championship campaign last year as a 19-year-old, he scored 3-21 (3-6 from play), while this spring he had racked up 0-20 in five games as Armagh occupied the top place in Division Two before the shutters came down. It is not just his scoring returns, but his ball-winning, movement and play-making that has marked him out as a talent destined for great things.
‘He is a huge talent, he is the future for Crossmaglen and Armagh over the next 10 years, but the thing is that he is ably assisted now and that is why Armagh is pushing hard again to get back in Division One.
‘When you throw in his older brother, Oisín, Jamie (Clarke), Andrew Murnin, Rory Grugan and Stefan Campbell, who is back playing at the level he was in 2014, we have a front six that are Division One standard.
‘That is why it is so important that they get exposed to that and get out of Division Two,’ says Kernan.
With a home game against Roscommon and a road trip to Clare to come in October, the odds are that they will deliver on that; in the process reaffirming the long-term view taken by the board in appointing Kieran McGeeney (above) on a five-year term in 2015, which has been subsequently extended.
That the board held its nerve and McGeeney held his faith over the past half-decade is to be admired, because it is likely that both were tested.
While it has taken the arrival of O’Neill and Jarlath Óg Burns, their exciting ball-playing midfielder, to sprinkle some star dust, quality has never really been their issue but application and execution have. While questions have been raised over their defence, their biggest difficult has been in coming to terms with system-based defensive game-plans, which tend to be most sharply defined in Ulster. It took McGeeney five attempts to win his first Ulster game last year, but it was the impotence of his attack in the previous four years that was striking. In losing to Donegal, Cavan, Down and Fermanagh, they managed to score an average of just 10.5 points per game, but in the 13 games they played outside Ulster in the same period they averaged 18.6 points per game.
Their inability at the back to deal with a running game and in attack to penetrate with one was at the root of their troubles. They had the football, but the question marks lingered as to whether they had the physicality and ruthlessness to make it count lingered.
Earlier this month, their captain Stefan Campbell posted an image of his defined body post lockdown, while others — notably Kernan’s clubmate James Morgan — have shown that they are growing in more than confidence.
‘You can look at the conditioning of teams and actually know if they are a top six team or if they are outside that and I have noticed in the last year coming up against these players at club level, you can see the kind of changes in their body shape that is needed to be at the very top level.
‘I believe that is coming from the guys themselves. They are probably saying to themselves enough is enough, our county careers are passing us by here with little or no success unless you are counting division three titles. And that is not what their ability deserves and it is not the way that they want to finish their careers.’
While the perception is that a winter Championship will facilitate slug-fests, the flip side is that the lack of preparation afforded to teams might tamper with just how effectively teams can execute system-based defensive game-plans. Either way, Armagh may now have the
‘I would love to see them expressing themselves’
muscle for an arm-wrestle and the skill for a game of ball.
More than anything, it is the quickfire rhythm of a knock-out Championship that could play right into their hands, argues Kernan.
‘In any given day in Ulster you can get clipped and what kept happening us is we kept getting clipped in the first round.
‘We nearly had too much time to think, plan and eventually over-plan what we are going to do and I think as a result there was an element of mental fatigue and we did not go out and express ourselves the way we could.
‘The ability was always there but that is why the qualifiers suited us more. The games were coming week on week, you play, you recover, you look at a few weakness from the week before and a few strengths of the opposition, but you are not overthinking it. There is no eight-week build up where you think about nothing but this game.
‘You have two league games to prepare and then you have just one shot at this, so there is that continuity. If
I was still playing at that level I would love this.
‘It is a unique year, back to knockout football and it is something these guys will never have experienced and I would love to see them going out there and going for it, expressing themselves and see where it takes them,’ says Kernan.
The answer to that, should Armagh beat Derry, is an Ulster semi-final against either Donegal or Tyrone and that is something that could be perfectly set-up for McGeeney’s team.
‘Whoever comes out of our game against Derry will have a wonderful opportunity to have a one-off game against either Donegal or Tyrone, whose psyche will be all about each other given the magnitude of that fixture.
‘Suddenly you have them a week later in a sudden-death game. Could they be caught off-guard? Will they be able to raise their game to the same level as the week before? I am not so sure that they will. There is a real chance there, you know.’
Armagh’s long wait may be nearing an end.