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Great to see another Ulster team in the final but after the past few years it's hard not to be jealous that we weren't the team that made it. I'm sure the players are thinking the same. Hopefully we can get the manager situation sorted soon and use it as motivation to get back to where we were pre Donegal game.

If you look at our last two championship games v Kerry we were well in it for an hour and last year the better team by a distance. Armagh today were probably second best until 45 min when the goal sparked them into life but what sets them apart from us at the minute is definitely their squad depth. Bringing on the likes of Soupy, McQullian, Jarly og, Duffy etc. We can't do that. We did work on it this year before being decimated by injuries but needs to again be a priority for the new manager in the league this year.

Other thoughts are that the greatest minor set up of recent times is probably Kerry and their 5 in a row 2014 to 2018 I think. They've maybe got 5 or 6 players from a 100 minor all Ireland winners. A lot probably thought they would dominate senior around this time but they seem to be getting worse and they don't have a great squad either. Underage success is no guarantee of senior success though it definitely helps and id be happy to take the 1 senior AI that group has won for our recent successful minor teams!

In all my years I've never seen a more low key All Ireland semi final in my life, very little talk or buzz around the town and I'm not aware of how many tickets have been purchased but Croke Park will probably be just over half full which is crap for atmosphere

I'd have thought Armagh would have been chomping at the bit for tickets for this game.
I know for the last 2 years it was very difficult to get tickets for the AISFs that Derry were in given but given how long it had been since we got that far that's understandable.
I dont understand apathy in Armagh for an AISF though.
Maybe its the Kerry factor - where they dont really travel in numbers until a final.

It was easy to get tickets for the Derry AISF, sure the top deck was half empty for  them and they were on general sale.

If Gallagher still refused to blood new players there could eb a generation of talent lost as well from all these Minor sides. Not worth the risk

Gallagher blooded half our current team

Id say there is some extra pints been sipped in Dundalk/Ardee/Drogheda this evening.

Ger Brennan wouldn't be the worst shout for the next Derry manager

I can't see RG going to Kildare. The media shit storm being so close to Dublin would be a lot bigger than in one of the Northern counties.

Tyrone and Armagh men in agreemwnt,

Strange, strange times

Very strange but as long as the down ones don't start agreeing with us Im ok

no chance of that lol,  though I hope the Armagh support can get in early to cheer on their neighbours in the Europa league final 🤪

Cheering for Down or Laois? It would be like having a ballot paper with only the TUV and DUP on it.

Tbf the down men are our neighbours so will give them a shout .

Listening to the various pundits talking about Kerry and its apparent the narrative is that Kerry want to play football but aren't allowed by the negative tactics of the opposition and that only Dublin and Kerry play open football .
It's a very simplistic interpretation and one that will take hold over the next 10/12 days
The referee in this match will be key.
gough or lane ?
Just pray it's not thin eejit who did the Ulster semi final against down.

I find that narrative very hard to listen to. It's basically an anti Northern thing in the southern media. You never hear it said about the Connacht teams. Derry have now dragged Mayo and Kerry down to play this horrible game. Armagh now will do the same. The best games of the year have all involved Ulster teams as well.

Derry chance was last year when still a bit unknown. How good are they? Not sure. Maybe a top 6 side

Prob the 6th best side in the country and they've had a terrible championship. A good manager improves them imo. McGuinness moved Donegal from about 10 to the top 4.

There can be big changes in one year. We've 3 teams that didn't make a semi final last year in the semis this year.

Harte is a good manager to set the ground work for a county. Bringing him in at the end stage is just madness.

What other choices did we have? It wasn't the plan to get rid of our manager last year. O'Rourke didn't want it, Meenagh didn't want it.

For the Derry folk, what would have constituted a good season?

What meaningful progress would they have had to have seen to be count this as an honorable end to the year? Another semi final at the least?

Based on expectations at the start of the year I think par would have another semi final. The league was brilliant and beating the Dubs in a classic league final shouldn't be laughed at given this team was in Div 4 5 seasons ago. We've taken a step back but we had taken 10 steps forward so we can't be too disheartened.

Glen won the AI, our u20s were very unlucky to lose to Tyrone on pens and they won the AI, our minors are in the AI final.  Next year we'll prob be ranked 6 to 8 in the country instead of 3. Lower expectations might not be a bad thing if there is a new mgmt in place.

It's hard to see Derry dropping outside the top tier in the next 5 years. We have a few players that turned 30 this year but most of the team are in their prime or approaching it. There have been worse times for a Derry fan.

Is a common denominator not also that the forwards just weren't / aren't there on the team being beat by Kerry...

It's not a forward thing it's a tactical approach imo. Forwards can look bad if they have no support.

Despite this McGuigan was the best player on the pitch as he so often is. Murray didn't perform yesterday maybe partly due to tactics and lack of service but you can't deny he has the ability to be a top level forward and has shown it. Ethan Doherty is as good a whf as there is. Our best forwards were no worse than Kerry's yday. The otherside is that if we did go more attacking we could have got tanked but I don't think we would have given the good individual match ups. Maybe it would have just ended up a narrow defeat again who knows. The confidence wasn't there to do that though.

Derry looked like they went out to stop kerry rather than to win.

Had some brilliant individual performances from Glass and Rogers in particular. Mcguigan in the first half too.
Mcevoy mostly did a job on O'Se and Chrissy did much better on Clifford this year than he did last year.

But, we were toothless.
Ball too slow to get forward, and not enough off the shoulder runs. Final 3rd passes went to kerry unforced. Then rash shots too.

Kerry were far from impressive and only pulled away a bit when we had to chase a 3pt lead.

Derry subs were made too late, and took off the wrong players.

Disappointed, but not that unexpected.
Championship to forget.
Harte....hasn't brought much.
We look like the team that had just come out of div 3 a few years ago.

You are looking at it this morning thinking we got so much right in terms of match ups. If someone told you before that Clifford wouldn't be seen after the first 10 min, Paudie would barely get a kick from Conor Doherty, Seanie oshea would be wrapped up by McEvoy and McGuigan would be the best player on the pitch you'd think we'd have a great chance but then the performance was just so flat when we needed to kick on. We needed a few things to go our way in the last 20 min but once Kerry got that 2 or 3 point lead it was over. We didn't get anything from our defenders in an attacking sense which is unusual but I suppose we had to go back to basics after the championship hammerings. It definitely feels like we've went back during this championship.

Armagh are better than us right now and have the ability to beat Kerry but I will always question their ability to get over the line until they do it. Expect a very close game.

This sounds v like Tyrone defeats in the 2010s to Kerry

You are probably right. There is a common denominator.

I'll probably regret this very soon after but I hope Armagh beat Kerry. Kerry are infallible in the southern media. It takes two to tango and they played an equal part in that shit match.

Derry looked like they went out to stop kerry rather than to win.

Had some brilliant individual performances from Glass and Rogers in particular. Mcguigan in the first half too.
Mcevoy mostly did a job on O'Se and Chrissy did much better on Clifford this year than he did last year.

But, we were toothless.
Ball too slow to get forward, and not enough off the shoulder runs. Final 3rd passes went to kerry unforced. Then rash shots too.

Kerry were far from impressive and only pulled away a bit when we had to chase a 3pt lead.

Derry subs were made too late, and took off the wrong players.

Disappointed, but not that unexpected.
Championship to forget.
Harte....hasn't brought much.
We look like the team that had just come out of div 3 a few years ago.

You are looking at it this morning thinking we got so much right in terms of match ups. If someone told you before that Clifford wouldn't be seen after the first 10 min, Paudie would barely get a kick from Conor Doherty, Seanie oshea would be wrapped up by McEvoy and McGuigan would be the best player on the pitch you'd think we'd have a great chance but then the performance was just so flat when we needed to kick on. We needed a few things to go our way in the last 20 min but once Kerry got that 2 or 3 point lead it was over. We didn't get anything from our defenders in an attacking sense which is unusual but I suppose we had to go back to basics after the championship hammerings. It definitely feels like we've went back during this championship.

Armagh are better than us right now and have the ability to beat Kerry but I will always question their ability to get over the line until they do it. Expect a very close game.

Why is Saturday game not on

People are viewing it as an end of an era but Dublin will still win more All Irelands this decade. I said the same after they lost to Mayo in 2021.
I think it will be a Donegal Kerry final.

An end of an era in the sense that there will no longer be total domination of the AI I hope. A period like the 90s would be nice.

The semi final draw is really vague 'where possible'. If you are going to have this rule why is it different from the qf where you can draw a provincial opponent as long as it's not the final? At sf stage it should be an open draw. It could be the second year in a row that the Dubs and Kerry are kept apart because of 2 Ulster teams in the semi final.