Armagh, an even bigger mess

[thewobbler]

Holy God,the sooner that robot McGeeney does the decent thing and buggers off, the better. A complete waste of space

A well reasoned and argued contribution,  backed up by analysis and facts, with some excellent insights into county management!

Well I think 1 Leinster U21 win in 16 years of county management is all the analysis and facts required. I think the fact that he's been in charge of the players that won the 2009 Minor All Ireland but has failed to win a single trophy is also worth taking into account.

"1 Leinster U21win in 16 years of county management is all the analysis and facts required" No its really not!
Don't care what he did or didn't do with Kildare.

Let's look at Armagh. His record in the Ulster championship is poor?
Has he had a team capable of winning an Ulster title?
Breaks my heart to say so but genuinely not.

How many of the current squad would make the team from 1999-2005?
Some would be squad players. No starters.

2009 minor team...how many are available to him. The 1992 minor finalists was in my humble opinion a far better team than the winning team of 2009.

When we were winning Ulster titles for fun and were serious All Ireland contenders we had 5/6 forwards ang one of whom was a match winner on their day.
Do we genuinely have 1 match winner in the squad now?

The difficulty in defending McGeeney's record is that Cavan and Derry have both come from nowhere to win Ulster the past three years. Neither had better players than Armagh, but had the conviction, belief, energy, discipline to ride the lightning.

——

There's an eerie similarity between current Armagh and Down in the early noughties. Big, loyal following home and away, check. All Ireland winning captain and all round legend as manager, check. Best players in the county committed to same manage, check. Strong forward line with a proper top class 14, check. Everyone wondering if said 14 should play out the field to get him on the ball more, check. Regularly decimated at midfield, check. A mixture of forwards and club standard players in defence, check. Tendency to flatline for long periods of  games, conceding 6-8 scores in a row, check. Bouncing in and around D1 league football for years, check. Absolutely useless in the Ulster Championship, check. Club football reduced down to one dominant team and all the rest, check. County underage teams exiting regularly in round 1, check. A string of former county legends willing and ready to take on the management job, but with no particular CV to suggest they'll be an improvement, check.

And so on.

From a Down perspective, things did improve a little after Paddy O'Rourke was moved along. Carr and Kane were not an improvement but the team approached Tyrone differently under them; a monkey off the back. And Wee James by hook or crook built a team from embers to an AI final. But our juvenile production line stopped producing the goods around the same time, and really, Jim Gavin wouldn't have won us an Ulster in the past decade. That's just where we are.