Tuesday afternoon at Croke Park and Laois manager Justin McNulty, whilst attending a preview event for the Tailteann Cup final, is asked about his time as an Armagh player. Is it a regret of his that, as part of a generational Armagh team, they only captured the one All-Ireland, in 2002?
“It haunts all of us,” he conceded. “We didn’t do ourselves justice.”
A day later and Justin’s brother Enda, who also started in defence for that 2002 final defeat of Kerry, is asked the same question. Speaking at an event organised by championship sponsors AIB, he too is directed to discuss this Saturday’s rematch between Armagh and Kerry in the context of their mid-2000s rivalry.
Regrets? You better believe it. “We never won enough during that time,” said Enda. “We’ll go to our graves with that regret. I cannot mince my words on that. I’ll go to my grave with the regret that we didn’t win more All-Irelands. I wouldn’t try to plámás that by putting lovely, glossy language around that. I literally, every single day, think about how we never won more All-Irelands.”
These days McNulty presents as a ‘leader in performance, resilience and wellbeing’ offering a suite of services in the ‘executive coaching’ arena. His references are extensive, from elite sports people and Formula One teams to companies including Google and Amazon. Closing in on 50, he still describes his approach as a “day one” mindset and attributes this to the amount of defeats he suffered playing for Armagh.
He believes it was the same for the likes of Justin, who will manage Laois against Down on Saturday, and Kieran McGeeney, who will be on the same sideline immediately afterwards to tackle Kerry all over again. Tony McEntee and Oisín McConville, who also played in the 2002 defeat of Kerry, managed in this year’s championship too.
Aidan O’Rourke, another team-mate, was in charge of the Armagh minor team that contested last weekend’s All-Ireland final. John McEntee, Stevie McDonnell, Ronan Clarke, the list of those that turned to coaching goes on.
“All of us have probably been impacted by the fact that we’ve only won one All-Ireland, which means, and I can’t speak for everybody, but I would say on my behalf that I almost feel that because we never won more, I’m hungrier to do more now, I’m more humble, I’m more curious,” said McNulty. “I think the fact that we never won so much has actually been an advantage, that everyone involved with that team has unfinished business in life, which is a good thing.”
Maybe that hurt motivated McGeeney to get involved afterwards as Armagh senior manager – he is in the role a decade now – though he was never short on drive. McNulty, who grew up in Mullaghbawn with McGeeney, recognised that from an early age McNulty remembers being paired off with “Geezer” in tackling drills as a teenager. One-v-one in a five by three metre grid.
“It’s an intense two minutes, non-stop, getting battered from all angles,” said McNulty. “It was teaching you toughness and it was learning the professionalism of Kieran McGeeney, even at 19 years of age, his weightlifting, his lifestyle, his mentality. It was an incredibly positive thing to be around.”
The current Armagh team shares a lot of McGeeney’s qualities, equal parts silk and steel. Yes, they have lost four huge games on penalties across the last three seasons. But another way of looking at it is that in Armagh’s last 18 championship games only one team, Tyrone in 2023, has managed to beat them over 70 minutes.
“I agree, their consistency of performance has been excellent over the last five years,” said McNulty. “I think the fact that they haven’t been beaten in normal time much over those years obviously will give them confidence and belief. Time has clearly built significant resilience and mental toughness and grit.”
And yet they’ll need so much more again to overcome Kerry.
“I hope to hell they win,” said McNulty. “I think it’s 50-50, I do think it’s 50-50. I think it’s the team that gets the game plan best, it’s the team that reacts best to the pressure, it’s the team that does something maybe special with blitz defence either side and probably it’s the team that has the best critical moment toughness.”
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