IT WAS NOVEMBER 1973 when Armagh football reached its point of no return.
Three games into their Division 2 league campaign, they had no points, and defeat away to Donegal left the panel stretched.
Jimmy Smyth had been injured that day. Manager Gene Larkin sent him on again, even though he could barely walk.
Unlike today when injured players travel with the team and offer moral support, Smyth was told to stay at home a fortnight later as Armagh travelled down to Carrick-on-Shannon to play a Leitrim team who hadn’t won in a year.
Leitrim beat Armagh 1-8 to 1-3, though this was “an Armagh side short of some of their regular players”, the Irish Independent curtly noted. It took them until the 42nd minute to get their first score and within five minutes, they scored all of their 1-3.
Now, the next part is disputed, but with two Crossmaglen players stopped by the British Army on their way to the game, Armagh were short players. Some re-tellings of the tale have it that they had to get the bus driver to stand in at corner-forward just to field a team.
A forensic check with Smyth – the voice of the BBC NI’s Championship programme for two decades – proved that to be a colourful but ultimately false yarn. He does point out that Padge Scullion, his Clan na Gael colleague, had to forego his goalkeeper jersey to stand in at an entirely unfamiliar full-forward role though.
An avid media consumer, one barometer of the time sticks with Smyth.
“It was a bit more relaxed back then,” he notes.
“That year we were rated 31st out of 32 in Ireland. Only Kilkenny was below us in the Sunday Independent paper. We were so far back, binoculars wouldn’t have caught sight of us.”
As a young student in St Joseph’s teacher training college in Belfast – better known as The Ranch – he would get the train down for training, turn up and find he was the only one there. Sure, the Troubles played a part, but there was a complete absence of drive too.
“When that happened in Leitrim, it didn’t ring any alarm bells for me,” he says.
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“Apathy reigned supreme. I don’t think it was among the players as such. It might have percolated down to the players, but apathy ran within the county. We didn’t expect anything.”
Jimmy Smyth on the right. Presseye / Philip Magowan/INPHO
Presseye / Philip Magowan/INPHO / Philip Magowan/INPHO
The result in Leitrim prompted a few things. For a start, everyone on the county board resigned.
Everyone except the county chairman, Tommy Lynch.
Instead, Lynch recruited Peter Makem. One of the famous musical family, Makem was a reporter with the Armagh Observer newspaper and an Armagh follower in his mid-20s. Lynch recruited him as a John The Baptist figure. He went around the top players in Armagh and asked them to give proper commitment to the county for three years, after which they would be Ulster champions.
“I knew immediately what was wrong,” Makem tells us this week.
“They had one manager after another, but there was nothing to manage. Back then, Armagh teams were a ring-around. Some players were getting called up at midnight on a Saturday to fill out the team and they barely knew each other.
“I wanted to unite them all. There was north, south and mid-Armagh. Very different in some ways. The south men looked to Dundalk and Monaghan for socialising and so on. The men from the north were closer to Belfast.”
So before they achieved anything – not even a successful training session – they held a celebration.
The Charlemont Arms Hotel was booked. Potential players were tapped up and invited, along with their wives or partners.
A meal was laid on, paid for by Lynch. With his musical contacts, Makem sourced a band from Blackwater that were going to make it big, and he paid them the princely sum of £30. The night was a hooley, but ended with a solemn promise that they would all buy in to this thing.
Gerry O’Neill had managed the county before. A teacher in St Colman’s College, Newry, he grew exasperated with the lack of county board support and quit. They had serious players, like Smyth and Joe Kernan, and O’Neill was well aware of that.
Joe Kernan ahead of the 2002 All-Ireland final, with his jersey from the 1977 final. INPHO
INPHO
So Makem – who had found himself as county manager in 1974/75, knowing full well that he was way too young – coaxed him back.
The team and management set a number of targets and an easy one to name was to not lose any games at home, which back then was at the club ground of Smyth’s own club, Clan na Gael. The record stood for eight seasons.
“From ’74, go on for nine seasons after that, we appeared in four Ulster finals, an All-Ireland final, three McKenna Cup finals and two national league finals. We won two national leagues, three Ulster championships, and lost the McKenna Cup and league finals,” explains Smyth.
Considering they had only four Ulster titles in their history up to that time (1890, 1902, 1950 and 1953), you take his point.
He was captain when they finally delivered Ulster in 1977, beating Derry in the final, 3-10 to 1-5. He lifted the cup; the lid went one way, Smyth went another.
The Armagh support caught fire that day and has never been extinguished since. Reaching the All-Ireland final in 1977, where they were beaten heavily by Dublin, ensured that they would always see Sam Maguire as unfinished business.
Armagh fan Dominic Garvey with his flag from the 1977 All-Ireland final. Bryan Keane / INPHO
Bryan Keane / INPHO / INPHO
“Where we were in ’74, you would have taken that,” says Smyth. “In ’77, the place was an absolute mass of colour. An absolute mass and you still see that to this day.”
Better was to come. The bitter lessons learned in ’77 fuelled Joe Kernan and the 2002 All-Ireland triumph, while Kernan’s general, Kieran McGeeney, was rewarded for a lifetime’s persistence with a Celtic Cross of his own as manager in 2024.
On Sunday, they will flood Clones as they head for their fourth Ulster final in a row, this time against Monaghan.
The old market town looks spectacular splashed in that tangerine. The younger generation will always have their own way of doing things.
Chloe Baker, Aoibhinn O' Hagan, Niamh Byrne, Eimear Forker and Emma Tumilty before an Armagh game. Tom Maher / INPHO
Tom Maher / INPHO / INPHO
Upon reaching the All-Ireland final in 1953, a flame was lit within the interest Armagh people hold for their county team. For McGeeney’s very first game in charge, the 2015 Dr McKenna Cup, the throw-in had to be delayed by half an hour to accommodate the 8,463 crowd, while the Athletic Grounds was still being packed out for Division 3 league games in those first few years.
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In the coming weeks, McGeeney and his Armagh players are set to take up residence in their new training location at St Malachy’s Portadown, built for a cost of €11.5 million (£10 million).
They all stand on the shoulders of giants.
Peter Makem is still going strong, his memory clear. He won’t get to Clones on Sunday but he has his memories, not least of when his second spell as manager brought success with the Ulster title in 1982.
Gerry O’Neill passed away last summer at the age of 88. His younger brother Martin is currently trying to win the Scottish Premier League with Celtic.
Jimmy Smyth cannot be stopped or slowed. He had a ticket already sorted for the final by the time somebody asked him if he would be a guest of the Ulster Council and introduce the Tyrone jubilee team of 2001 to the crowd.
“Somebody has a wicked sense of humour,” he cackles.
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From there to here: how a 1970s hooley paved the way for Armagh football's modern success
IT WAS NOVEMBER 1973 when Armagh football reached its point of no return.
Three games into their Division 2 league campaign, they had no points, and defeat away to Donegal left the panel stretched.
Jimmy Smyth had been injured that day. Manager Gene Larkin sent him on again, even though he could barely walk.
Unlike today when injured players travel with the team and offer moral support, Smyth was told to stay at home a fortnight later as Armagh travelled down to Carrick-on-Shannon to play a Leitrim team who hadn’t won in a year.
Leitrim beat Armagh 1-8 to 1-3, though this was “an Armagh side short of some of their regular players”, the Irish Independent curtly noted. It took them until the 42nd minute to get their first score and within five minutes, they scored all of their 1-3.
Now, the next part is disputed, but with two Crossmaglen players stopped by the British Army on their way to the game, Armagh were short players. Some re-tellings of the tale have it that they had to get the bus driver to stand in at corner-forward just to field a team.
A forensic check with Smyth – the voice of the BBC NI’s Championship programme for two decades – proved that to be a colourful but ultimately false yarn. He does point out that Padge Scullion, his Clan na Gael colleague, had to forego his goalkeeper jersey to stand in at an entirely unfamiliar full-forward role though.
An avid media consumer, one barometer of the time sticks with Smyth.
“It was a bit more relaxed back then,” he notes.
As a young student in St Joseph’s teacher training college in Belfast – better known as The Ranch – he would get the train down for training, turn up and find he was the only one there. Sure, the Troubles played a part, but there was a complete absence of drive too.
“When that happened in Leitrim, it didn’t ring any alarm bells for me,” he says.
“Apathy reigned supreme. I don’t think it was among the players as such. It might have percolated down to the players, but apathy ran within the county. We didn’t expect anything.”
The result in Leitrim prompted a few things. For a start, everyone on the county board resigned.
Everyone except the county chairman, Tommy Lynch.
Instead, Lynch recruited Peter Makem. One of the famous musical family, Makem was a reporter with the Armagh Observer newspaper and an Armagh follower in his mid-20s. Lynch recruited him as a John The Baptist figure. He went around the top players in Armagh and asked them to give proper commitment to the county for three years, after which they would be Ulster champions.
“I knew immediately what was wrong,” Makem tells us this week.
“They had one manager after another, but there was nothing to manage. Back then, Armagh teams were a ring-around. Some players were getting called up at midnight on a Saturday to fill out the team and they barely knew each other.
“I wanted to unite them all. There was north, south and mid-Armagh. Very different in some ways. The south men looked to Dundalk and Monaghan for socialising and so on. The men from the north were closer to Belfast.”
So before they achieved anything – not even a successful training session – they held a celebration.
The Charlemont Arms Hotel was booked. Potential players were tapped up and invited, along with their wives or partners.
A meal was laid on, paid for by Lynch. With his musical contacts, Makem sourced a band from Blackwater that were going to make it big, and he paid them the princely sum of £30. The night was a hooley, but ended with a solemn promise that they would all buy in to this thing.
Gerry O’Neill had managed the county before. A teacher in St Colman’s College, Newry, he grew exasperated with the lack of county board support and quit. They had serious players, like Smyth and Joe Kernan, and O’Neill was well aware of that.
So Makem – who had found himself as county manager in 1974/75, knowing full well that he was way too young – coaxed him back.
The team and management set a number of targets and an easy one to name was to not lose any games at home, which back then was at the club ground of Smyth’s own club, Clan na Gael. The record stood for eight seasons.
“From ’74, go on for nine seasons after that, we appeared in four Ulster finals, an All-Ireland final, three McKenna Cup finals and two national league finals. We won two national leagues, three Ulster championships, and lost the McKenna Cup and league finals,” explains Smyth.
Considering they had only four Ulster titles in their history up to that time (1890, 1902, 1950 and 1953), you take his point.
He was captain when they finally delivered Ulster in 1977, beating Derry in the final, 3-10 to 1-5. He lifted the cup; the lid went one way, Smyth went another.
The Armagh support caught fire that day and has never been extinguished since. Reaching the All-Ireland final in 1977, where they were beaten heavily by Dublin, ensured that they would always see Sam Maguire as unfinished business.
“Where we were in ’74, you would have taken that,” says Smyth. “In ’77, the place was an absolute mass of colour. An absolute mass and you still see that to this day.”
Better was to come. The bitter lessons learned in ’77 fuelled Joe Kernan and the 2002 All-Ireland triumph, while Kernan’s general, Kieran McGeeney, was rewarded for a lifetime’s persistence with a Celtic Cross of his own as manager in 2024.
On Sunday, they will flood Clones as they head for their fourth Ulster final in a row, this time against Monaghan.
The old market town looks spectacular splashed in that tangerine. The younger generation will always have their own way of doing things.
Upon reaching the All-Ireland final in 1953, a flame was lit within the interest Armagh people hold for their county team. For McGeeney’s very first game in charge, the 2015 Dr McKenna Cup, the throw-in had to be delayed by half an hour to accommodate the 8,463 crowd, while the Athletic Grounds was still being packed out for Division 3 league games in those first few years.
In the coming weeks, McGeeney and his Armagh players are set to take up residence in their new training location at St Malachy’s Portadown, built for a cost of €11.5 million (£10 million).
They all stand on the shoulders of giants.
Peter Makem is still going strong, his memory clear. He won’t get to Clones on Sunday but he has his memories, not least of when his second spell as manager brought success with the Ulster title in 1982.
Gerry O’Neill passed away last summer at the age of 88. His younger brother Martin is currently trying to win the Scottish Premier League with Celtic.
Jimmy Smyth cannot be stopped or slowed. He had a ticket already sorted for the final by the time somebody asked him if he would be a guest of the Ulster Council and introduce the Tyrone jubilee team of 2001 to the crowd.
“Somebody has a wicked sense of humour,” he cackles.
****
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