Armagh - 0-9 Cork - 1-3:All football is local. You would have thought that there would be sufficient satisfaction in Crossmaglen yesterday to see the still-fresh All-Ireland champions applauded on to the field by the bluebloods from Cork while the intruders from the helicopter base next door observed unblinkingly.
Yet a murmur went through the crowd. Hope Tyrone have to applaud us on to the field. Wouldn't that be sweet?
The game that followed expressed the same sense of thoughts being on other things. It's a time of year for heavy lifting work, for drawing water and hefting logs. Summer is a long way off and right now Cork and Armagh are busy working off the imperfections of winter.
Armagh, with more residual excellence and fitness to fall back upon, looked the more promising side from the start. Two minutes in and Oisin McConville skewered the goalposts with a wonderful free taken wide right on the sideline from his hands.
It's a familiar piece of turf and a familiar trick for McConville, but still it begged our applause. His comrades took their cue for a while and for a decent spell Armagh were the boys of summer. An abbreviated full forward line, a swamping, zonal defence, a muscular, ball-winning capability and those smart, long, diagonal balls to spaces inside the opposition 21.
Better and cuter than they've generally been given credit for. Steven McDonnell won some fine ball to feed his prodigality with. Three early wides were a waste of donkey work but a promise of better stuff.
Barry Duffy was riding shotgun with McDonnell at this stage in the full forward line and all around them they had prairies of space. Diarmuid Marsden, surging through, added another point on 10 minutes and one expected the drip of calmly-taken scores to last all afternoon.
Cork were still thinking the business through, however. Martin Cronin slotted a free, but Paddy McKeever posted another wonderful score from a sideline kick, and a minute later Marsden burst on to a loose ball and attempted to slip it Robbie Keane-style past Kevin O'Dwyer in the Cork goal. A wonderful save was the answer.
Thereafter things appeared to turn. Nicholas Murphy was handing in a fine performance at midfield. Anthony Lynch was taking the full back line by the scruff of the neck. Cork weren't going anywhere but they weren't leaking too badly either.
Armagh kept trying to do what they have taught themselves to do. McConville pointed another free. McDonnell got something into brackets after his name with a well-deserved score which topped off a fine move down the right wing.
Cork wouldn't go away, though, and when Nicholas Murphy used his muscle to tag the visitors' second score of the afternoon just before half-time one wondered if a four-point margin would be enough for a waning Armagh team.
When Cork get to doing the post mortem on this one they will discover that the loss of Colin Corkery was critical. Apart from everything that the Nemo man does when he has the ball, he is easy to get the ball to. Against a side like Armagh that's a blessing worth having.
Marsden scored for Armagh in the fourth minute of the half and that was the last time the home side bothered the scoreboard operator for half an hour.
Cork closed the gap, but in modest increments. Cronin's floated sideline ball on 47 minutes gave Páidí Kissane the chance to rise and fist home, but the momentum died. Cork, two points behind at this stage, needed to take the next two or three scores in the game. Instead there was no score for 18 minutes and no little amount of niggle and shemozzle.
Cork owned the midfield and were defending well, with the backs getting out in front of their men and making sure the long early ball seldom found its target. A decent rate of return from the forwards would have been welcome, but they ran up five second-half wides and saw many moves interrupted at the last minute.
At the end the crowd were baying for Joe Kernan to fix it. Kernan shook what he needed from his team, helped by the sight of Noel O'Leary of Cork getting sent off for a second yellow card.
Paddy McKeever sealed the business with a fine kicked free out of the hands. A long journey home for Cork awaited but plenty to think about.
ARMAGH: P Hearty; E McNulty, J McNulty, P McCormack; A O'Rourke, K McGeeney, K Hughes; J McEntee (0-1), P McGrane; P McKeever (0-3, two frees), B Duffy, O McConville (0-2, frees); S McDonnell (0-1), D Marsden (0-2), T McEntee. Subs: P Loughran for B Duffy (59 mins), A Mallon for K McGeeney (68 mins).
CORK: K O'Dwyer; N O'Donovan, A O'Connor, A Lynch; J Miskella, E Sexton, N O'Leary; N Murphy (0-1), K Murphy; BJ O Sullivan, M Cronin (0-1 a free), P Kissane (1-0); C Murphy, F Murray (0-1, a free), C Crowley. Subs: J O'Donoghue for C Murphy (34 mins), D O'Sullivan for C Crowley (54 mins), C McCarthy for M Cronin (57 mins), R O'Mahoney for BJ O'Sullivan (70 mins), S Levis for J Miskella (70 mins).
Referee: S McCormack (Meath).
