Irish Daily Star - Inside Sport
KERNAN: TIME FOR EXCUSES IS AT AN END
THE last time Armagh beat Donegal in the championship, it heralded a new era for the team vanquished in Crossmaglen that day. Now it’s time they started one for themselves.
The fallout from that qualifier tie 12 years ago saw John Joe Doherty stepping down as manager and Jim McGuinness stepping in. A year later, Donegal were Ulster champions. The following year, they won the All-Ireland.
The 2-14 to 0-11 drubbing they suffered that day was very much in keeping with the relationship between the counties over the previous decade and more.
Struggled
Granted, Donegal scored a one-point win in 2007, but it was due to a fortuitous late goal, having struggled with the expectation that winning that year’s league brought for much of that afternoon.
“They had an inferiority complex against us back then. We always knew once the pressure came late on, we would have enough to get over them,” former Armagh star Aaron Kernan recalled.
The 2010 game stood out, though.
“They just took it so easy that day. On other days, they would have stuck at it, whereas, that day, they just took their beating. There was no resistance from them whatsoever.
“Leaving Crossmaglen that day, there’s not a chance you would have thought anyone coming in would have been able to do anything with that team, let alone what McGuinness turned them into,” added Kernan.
When Kernan made what proved to be his final appearance for Armagh against them in the 2014 All-Ireland quarter-final, a onepoint defeat, Donegal were a very different animal.
“They were under pressure. We’d got a goal in the second half, Mickey Murray had kicked a super point to put us one up again when it looked like it was toing and froing, but there was an air of composure and calmness about them.
Knew
“They all knew what they were about. They got the scores easier than we did. It was only a one-point win, but they didn’t look flustered or panicked that day.”
Donegal are probably somewhere in between now. Not as flaky as they were in 2010, not as flinty as 2014 either.
Kernan is somewhat uneasy about how Armagh chased down their suspensions in recent weeks but knows the time for them to deliver in Ulster is now.
“They’re just coming to the stage, there’s a game where you just have to go and win it. It doesn’t matter where it is or who it’s against, it has to be won. This is the day.
“We flopped two years ago against Donegal. We left a world of work to do against Monaghan in the first half last year. The excuses, everything has to go.
“I don’t take suspensions or whoever’s injured (into consideration), that’s the whole purpose of building a squad. This is the whole thing of having a backroom team like we have now, that boys are prepared and focused and ready to perform.
“Everything else is a sideshow.”