SOMETIME IN THE mid-90s, when Armagh couldn’t buy a slice of luck, a county captain stood in the middle of a hot Clones changing room, the lean-to window panes creating a greenhouse effect, condensation rolling down the walls.
He talked about the Armagh fans. He name checked a few from his club. What Armagh meant to them. How they couldn’t make a single plan for any summer until they saw how Armagh would fare out in the championship. How he would go out there onto the pitch and throw everything at it. For the lads.
Kieran McGeeney listened with growing discomfort, until he couldn’t take it a second longer.
He interrupted, and said that when it came to playing county football, he had nothing in common with the lad in the stand. With his can of Coke, and his bag of chips, or popcorn, or whatever it was, enjoying his day out, shouting from the stands.
He couldn’t relate to that person. But he could relate to everyone in the room with him, because they had come through the muck and gutters and pre-season Hell with him.
So he wouldn’t be doing it for the lads in the stands. He’d be doing it for the lads in that sweltering changing room.
The captain sat back down, feeling a little bit silly and wishing he could have said what McGeeney had said.
Asked about that exchange almost 30 years on, as he gets ready to manage his county into their fifth All-Ireland final against Galway on Sunday, he admits his motivations had changed over the years. Refined and evolved.
“Everybody has their own, and it’s the most clichéd, but everyone has their own ‘why?’” says McGeeney.
“It’s hard to say. I’m very close to my own family, my parents have gone the length of breath of this planet to watch me from Australia to the States, to England they watched me all over and they follow me now as manager. There’s a close affinity between me and them.
“There are people you bump into, and it means so much to. Armagh has so many genuine supporters who just love to see you do well and are so sorry for when you get beat.
“You get a lot of abuse within that but they tend not to be the same type of supporters. So it is always hard to know.”
As for dressing room comportment, he has relaxed his own policies. He is well aware that while every dressing room needs a McGeeney, policing the mood, it also needs a Benny Tierney flicking a towel off some exposed buttocks.
“You’ll see some fella sitting in the corner reciting mantras with goals set out in different colour pen, then you see some boy in the corner singing some song and dancing about the place. But whatever works for you.
“Once the whistle goes and you do the job, I don’t give a rat’s ass what way you do it. I learned that a long time ago. I know that goes against the persona people have of me but if you produce the goods, you can wear a pink tutu and get pom poms for all I care, you get out there, produce the goods and you can back it up, away you go.”
There’s an interesting bit of number play around this final. McGeeney made his Armagh debut in 1992. Ten years later, he captained them to their sole All Ireland.
It hasn’t been ten years since he became manager, but this is his tenth season after succeeding Paul Grimley. A definitive pattern with Armagh is that they do things the hard way. Perhaps that suits their make-up, but nothing is ever gifted to them.
Their penalty shoot-out defeats have exacted an enormous emotional toll, but they can also shake it off. Not since 24 April 2022, have they been beaten in knockout championship football in regulation time. They have met Galway regularly in that time. After they drew in the group stages this year, Pádraic Joyce sent McGeeney a text that night, saying they will look forward to meeting them in the final.
They won’t say it out loud, but they are possibly the most resilient county team. The hardest to beat.
What does McGeeney attribute it to?
“Loyalty, getting people to commit, getting older players to hang on and hang on. That balance,” he says.
“In ’99 Paddy McKeever came in and was outstanding, an 18-year-old and he was brilliant but it still wasn’t enough to get us over the line and we got beat by a point against Meath.
“Went to a replay against Kerry (in 2000), Steven McDonnell had made the breakthrough was playing corner back the year before ’99 and again so close.
“2001 . . . Thought it was gone but we all stayed on.
“(In 2002) I was coming 31 and (Ronan) Clarkie, didn’t start against Tyrone in that first round, Tony McEntee gets injured Ronan comes in and ends up getting Young Player of the Year.
“So it’s hard to say. Should it have taken ten years? Should it have took three or four? I don’t really know.”
As well as the outside criticism, there have been no shortage of those inside the county bounds that were out for the management team.
“I know it is hard work to keep it in a county like this, because sometimes there are as many people gunning for you as supporting you and trying to get everyone on board.
“When Joe (Kernan) came in that time, everyone jumped in. Cross were very strong on the club scene that time and you wouldn’t get them in until the summer.
“This time, everyone was all in. Those wee one percentages that can make a massive difference.”
McGeeney has also had to change some things about himself recently.
For the last number of years, he didn’t fancy speaking to the media after a game. Instead, he would ask a selector to do it.
However, whenever Armagh were beaten, he wouldn’t shirk the duties and did it himself. The difficulty with that was that the public barely saw a manager enjoy the aftermath of victory, but instead explaining away a defeat with a grave expression.
The policy proved disastrous in 2022 after Armagh were knocked out by Galway. At the end of normal time, an unseemly row broke out between the players. Tiernan Kelly was later banned for six months for his role.
Afterwards, McGeeney was asked about the incident and the mood turned sour and needlessly provocative.
This year, he was convinced that it would be in everyone’s best interests if he went back to fronting up the operation.
It has led to a more relaxed McGeeney. He’s a married man now. Ciaran McKeever says we are seeing more of his true personality, with one-liners and witticisms that they have always known was there.
“It’s a love-hate relationship, you know, I have with all of yous!” he says to the table of journalists.
“I understand the game within this. I do. Beige doesn’t sell and there’s headlines and stuff like that.
“And sometimes it’s difficult. But I treat it the same way as I treat the backslaps when you’re doing well. I know there’s not much difference between the two of them.
“So when it came to winning and that, like KD (Kieran Donaghy) has a great personality and so does Brookie (Ciaran McKeever) and they can take a bit more out of it.
“But my job is to take the shit as well, I don’t mind that, I’m well used to it so I suppose I did it.
“This year they were pushing back a wee bit on me and trying to get me to go out for the good ones, it was just something we had.
I’m not in this for me, I’ve had my day and enjoyed every moment as a player, loved it so I did. But sometimes my own personality, I’m good at giving yiz headlines because I can’t keep my mouth shut at the right time, so I hate taking away from the players, they are a great bunch and the whole idea of them getting the credit they deserve is big with me.
“It is more to do with I’m trying to get the players front and centre and getting people to recognise it, because my personality . . . but what they have achieved . . .
“Right, they didn’t win some penalty shoot outs, but have they shown they are a good football team? Yes. Maybe not great yet, but definitely a good one.
“And as I say there is a lot of past players looking to get back at me through barbed comments and stuff. Which is grand. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. I accept that. But you can’t take away from the fact that they are a good team.”
As for the difference in playing for a team heading for a final and managing one, he is clear.
“Ach there’s no comparison, you have to play. You have to compete,” he says.
“I wish I was 25! There is nothing like playing, we all know that. It’s like asking yous would you rather write a book or an article or read one?
“It’s being in it. Immersing yourself. Being part of it. Having a say in what’s happening.
“Despite what people say about managers and coaches a lot of it is down to the attitude of the players.”
Some years ago, his former team mate Aidan O’Rourke gave him a copy of a speech delivered to more than 2,000 people by former American President Theodore Roosevelt in Paris on 23 April, 1910. The speech was entitled ‘Citizenship In A Republic’ but became wider known as ‘The Man In The Arena’ for the stirring words:
‘It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
‘The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.’
For years afterwards, that speech sat in the top drawer of McGeeney’s table at work in the Irish Sports Council, the edges rounded by constant reference.
The cold, timid souls that neither know victory nor defeat have been sniping away at him since he took over Armagh. He couldn’t care less. It is not the critic that counts.
Even now, he is amused by the commentary that he himself is the man gripping the handbrake, trying to get the Armagh players to slow down.
“If I read one more time, ‘He’s holding them back. He has to let them go,’” he says with genuine bemusement.
“Like, as if I’m shouting ‘don’t go fellas, don’t go for any more scores. Hold back, don’t score any more!’
“It’s fucking nonsense. How people even contemplate even saying that stuff?”
In the past, it’s been said that McGeeney is an unlucky general. Life in the last month has delivered some shuddering reality. Prior to the Roscommon match, he received news that a beloved uncle, Peter Kelly, had died suddenly.
On top of that, his own son Cian suffered an appendix rupture and had to be hospitalised.
So, luck?
“Listen fellas, I’ve seen luck this week. I’ve had a horrible two weeks, a horrible two weeks,” he says.
“I’m the luckiest man. I’ve heard that sort of thing before. No, I don’t buy it. Yeah, some decisions go against me, think that is more to do with my personality.
“Listen, that’s the bed I make. I say what I think; always have always will, but the one thing, there are times I regret some of things I say, because you can say it in bad temper. I fully admit that. But the one thing I can say when it comes to football, I have never told a lie. Ever.
“You mightn’t like what I tell you but I’ll tell you what I think, and I’ve always been like that.
“You can always solve a problem when the truth is on the table. Always. It’s when you say something behind someone’s back . . .
“Don’t get me wrong, sometimes, my personality, I have to go back and apologise. But I will put my hands up. That’s one thing about me.”
On Sunday, he could join the very rare company of being an All Ireland winning captain, and manager. Nobody can say he didn’t work for it.
Every last ounce of it.
