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Is it too much of a reach to say that the winners of this game on saturday could well be the all ireland winners?

That'll not be far away. the winners will win ulster certainly

Best of luck to the old foe tomorrow. we'll be supporting armagh's finest all the way

There are those who would argue that Joe won't be trying anyone who could have an impact at centre half forward... he's holding that one in reserve. i'm starting to think he foesn't want anything above the mediocre to appear in the half back line either...

It probably wouldn't have made any difference anyway, but mick o'rourke is injured from last weekend

I still can't work out how Cathal o' Rourke got a penalty that day.

Speaks volumes that you don't even know who was fouled for the penalty...

its not our national soccer team

A bland enough draw i suppose, leaving all of the competitive (if there are any outside of cross) still there for the quarters.

I don't like our draw myself but we should be capable of getting through. Harps will be in a great position against cross, especially if the first round is played in early may as its supposed to be.

Interesting team. Good to see toner get a start at full back as it's a problem position and he has shown a lot of potential in the mckenna cup. I don't like the look of the half back line, especially against a hard running kildare team but i suppose these lads have to be thrown in at some time. swift and vernon is a mobile midfield pairing so long as they win enough ball... i'm not really sure who will compete with earley here though. from a dromintee point of view it's great to see young Dyas playing but i've never ever heard of him playing corner forward. even the times he lines out for the club in the half forward line, he rarely plays there.

whisper it quietly... paul took the mother and father of all roastings from gareth o'neill in the u21 final

I'll decide... who's slagging "the big four"? it's funny that i don't actually remember any of the big 4 winniing a championship.

Apologies umgola... no disrespect was intended. the point i was making was simply that our lads don't seem to have any intimidation issues with the clubs who are equally as successful as cross at underage but who the don't come onto ur radar at underage. of course our esteemed ballycrummy friends beat us on our last meeting, in 2001 i think?

congrats on you new pitch by the way amd the fantastic order it was in at the weekend.

Illdecide... the point was simply that we rarely have any  trouble with any of those teams in the championship and therefore i can't see any reason why we should adjust our players' mindsets towards them.

Corn, i appreciate what you are saying and certainly that particular age group contributed the most players as a group to the senior ranks of any minor team. that said, i don't thin any of those that you name will play senior championship football this year?

bc... i'm referring to underage games as our players come up through the ranks, not senior games in which, hopefully, we are competitive.

It's difficult for us to compete in this conversation about ogs, harps and cross and transforming underage success into senior as we've never won a thing at underage. even s armagh leagues are beyond our realms of competitive possibility.

I'm not sure how relevent it is to the discussion, but dromintee's task is to try to garner the 1 or 2 players from each minor team who are fit for b football the following year and keep them interested. every so often we then try to make a senior player out of these guys.

our underage teams don't have the numbers and certainly not the quality to be top 4 in the s armagh leagues. for example, our minors operated with about 18 players this year, 6 of whom were u16. maybe 2 of these minors will be good enough to train with the senior / b panel next season.

This may leave us open to ridicule but thats what we have and we're happy enough. we've been lucky in the last 5 years to have brought through some real quality players like the o'neills, mick o'rourke and dyas and that has allowed us to compete at senior championship level. to be honest, we don't see any more gems on the horizon and as players disappear out the top, they won't be replaced from now on.

with my freud hat on, our senior players have obviously won nothing at any stage of their development with the club and i'm sure that inhibits their mental approach when playing cross. only the likes of the o'rourkes, eddie martin,etc who have been exposed to higher levels of football play with total competitiveness against cross.  more usually, our players have grown up losing by 15 or 20 points to the likes of cross, mullaghbawn & killeavy. interestingly, we always struggle against s armagh teams in the championship but have no inhibiting respect for the likes of clans, ogs or harps.

a section of the Crossmaglen support got quite mouthy towards the end by abusing both the referee and some of the Dromintee players.  The Dromintee crowd, in contrast, remained dignified even in defeat.

Thats a point well made. It's something that happens at every cross championship game and somthing i wasn't going to bring up because it makes you look like a bad loser. The personal abuse vented on some of our players from the crossmaglen "support" was again disgusting. it has to be remembered that these are only lads and for 30 & 40 year old man to be screaming these things at them over a game of football is disappointing.

This has reared its head after every single match we've encountered cross but at the weekend there were men in the club saying they won't be going back to watch cross play our club or any other. it is very difficult to stand and listen to young lads who are your neighbours and members of the same club on the receiving end of the worst kind of vitriol, all for having the temerity to take to the same field as cross. every decision is a crime against the crossmaglen race and every piece of decent play by an opposition player is met with calls for legs to be broken the next time, questioning of parenthood or some other personal "accusation".

I have the utmost respect for the (vast majority of) crossmaglen players, management and football supporters, and every club has its idiots who you stand away from at games but cross bring things to the bottom of the barrell.

no matter which side of the ground you stood saturday there was no escaping it and it takes a tremendous amount of restraint to not take the bait and get into the neanderthol mud slinging. i stood not 10 yards from one empty vessel on the side opposite the road who will expect the full support of our parish later in the summer but yet managed to scream repeatedly that various dromintee players were (may have missed some).... scumbags, tubs of lard, britlovers (what?), knackers & gypsies.

yeah, i'll be cheering for him. not.

Aghdavoyle - i find that very difficult to believe

well i'm just saying what i was told