On a drizzly July day in Clones, nearly eight years ago, Donegal beat Armagh in the Ulster football final. The margin was narrow but Donegal had been comfortably the better team. For two members of the beaten side, it was the end of the line.

Goalkeeper Brian McAlinden and wing back Brian Canavan decided the time had come to retire. Tomorrow in Clones, both will be back in the big time as they jointly manage Armagh in the Ulster senior football semi-final against Derry.

Canavan remembers his last match for the county. "I went up to Joe Kernan who was in charge at that time and said all you have to do is slot in Benny Tierney in goals and John Rafferty for me and you've the makings of a team."

For whatever reason, things didn't work out that way for the county. It wasn't an old team and it contained a fair bit of talent but only four players survive from that time.

A year later, Armagh were narrowly beaten by a Down team which caused a sensation by taking the All-Ireland away from Munster's and Leinster's monopoly for the first time in 23 years. But in the years that followed Armagh never managed the breakthrough.

While Ulster took a long-term lease on the Sam Maguire, Armagh's wasn't one the names troubling the GAA's silversmith. And yet there was enough promising signs along the way to keep hope within the county unfeasibly high. Management has changed three times but until this year, nothing solid had been achieved.

A good run in 1993, involving as many matches as Derry took to win the All-Ireland but only taking Armagh to the Ulster semi-final, seemed to suggest that a team was gelling. A year previously, the county had been mugged of a minor All-Ireland by a last-minute goal by Meath. A year later, they stormed to the NFL final only to be thoroughly fleeced, again by Meath.

In 1995, Derry beat them in Armagh and beat them again 12 months later. The nadir was probably reached a year ago when a steady flow of possession was flittered away by awesomely bad shooting.

Yet in the last 15 months there have been further signs of promise. Crossmaglen won the All-Ireland club title and although Canavan and McAlinden have been at pains to stem the flood of expectations unleashed by a young and athletic team - pointing out that club and intercounty are different universes - the trend continued a couple of months ago with the county's first Ulster under-21 title.

"They are a very hungry side," says Brian McEniff, the long-serving Ulster Railway Cup manager who took Donegal to the All-Ireland six years ago. "The county has won an Ulster under-21 and an All-Ireland club in recent times and is all buoyed up. Their problem has been winning a lot of ball but not scoring. The county has lacked that self-confidence to convert scores but there's a huge hunger there now. Armagh had four on the Railway Cup team this year which tells you something.

"Armagh would be popular winners but Derry are very experienced, won't get carried away by it, are very focused and the best-prepared Derry team in years. It will be the last hurrah for some of their players if they lose."

To reach this stage, Armagh finally won a serious championship match, a first victory against ranking opposition in five years. Down weren't the team of old which had won two All-Irelands but they represented a test of the team's resolve.

"We played well and we were confident going into the match," says Canavan. "We felt that Down weren't that good, as the Tyrone team they'd beaten was short about five players. It would have been a terrible bugbear not to have come through and you'd expect a team to come on after that.

"I was disappointed not to have qualified for the League quarterfinals when Derry beat us. I felt we needed more experience but maybe it suited us in the end. We knuckled down to the championship. It's a different type of football.

"I wouldn't have been expecting too much of the team too soon. It's been slowly improving over the last three years, a gradual improvement. There's not much point in winning a couple of matches and not being able to sustain it. A natural progression is what you want and I'm just hoping that we've got that."

Swords have been crossed with Derry already this year. In the deciding section match at Celtic Park, Armagh lost out in the closing minutes and the defeat cost them a place in the play-offs as well as entry to next season's Division One.

"There wasn't a whole pile of relevance to it," says Canavan. "We were level a few minutes from the end and played well. With a bit of luck, we'd have won it."

Canavan and the Armagh line took a share of the kudos when the championship win of two weeks ago was analysed. Corner back Enda McNulty was sent off and the team showed great resilience in carving out a five-point win. Canavan said afterwards that the team had devised routines to cater for men being sent off from either side.

"We spent a wee bit of time working out what we'd do. Because of the new refereeing, there's going to be men sent off and you have to spend time working out what you're going to do."

Another tactical stunt was the naming of the county's best-known forward Diarmuid Marsden at wing back and then playing him at full forward. Canavan denies that the selection was blatantly misleading.

"Diarmuid had played at number five in a couple of challenges because we had a problem in the halfbacks. He's a good player and can play in a number of positions. We weren't sure whether himself or Kieran McGeeney would make the move back but in Ulster you have to name the team on a Tuesday and we had to make a decision early in the week."

In the event Marsden gave a fine performance at full forward and earned a Man of the Match citation although Canavan - and Brian McEniff - believe that McGeeney who switched back to the defence was a more deserving candidate.

Nonetheless, Marsden had a big impact and appears to be on the verge of fulfilling the potential on view since he was on the 1992 minor team.

"He's been playing a while but his career has been plagued by injuries," says Canavan. "This is the first year he's had a full run. He's had a very bad leg injury for a number of years. He's one of those players who if he plays well can swing the match. He played well against Down but he can play better."

In some ways it's misleading to think in terms of the current team's evolution because there have been so many new players introduced over the last 18 months. Crossmaglen have contributed two, Tony McEntee at full back and Oisin McConville in the left corner of the attack.

Five of the victorious under-21s feature and with seasoned campaigners such as Jarlath Burns and Niall Smyth, the team is well balanced but given the distance that has had to be travelled since last year, is the prospect of an Ulster title not far-fetched? Canavan isn't prepared to rule it out.

"I don't know if it's going too far to say these fellas can compete outside of Ulster this year if they got that far. They're young but they're experienced. Between the minor team in '92 and this year's under21s, they've experienced a good bit of big-time stuff and I like to think they could do a good bit.

"There's no knowing how far a team can can go after its first win. Sometimes when you're involved, you don't know how good they are or how far they can go."