GAA/Senior Football: Yesterday saw the end of the GAA's increasingly vibrant pre-season. Nearly 20,000 flocked to Casement Park in Belfast for the year's first sighting of football's current defining rivalry, All-Ireland champions Tyrone versus Ulster and National Football League holders Armagh.
The McKenna Cup semi-final climaxed a month of big attendances in Ulster and whereas Monaghan will face Tyrone in the final on February 19th, yesterday's crowd of 19,631 represents the high point of a very successful warm-up phase.
The new year finds Armagh and Tyrone as hard to separate as ever on the scoreboard but the All-Ireland champions were deserving winners having led by comfortable margins throughout before shipping a few late scores to reduce the final score to 0-13 to 0-11.
"All the fans that have come out over the past month have enjoyed it," said Armagh's manager Joe Kernan. "It's good to get out of the house after Christmas."
Late presents for Kernan's counterpart Mickey Harte included two deliveries from Australia. Brian McGuigan was spotted in the ground before the start although he wasn't involved in the action. Kevin Hughes, on the other hand, was back less than a week from his year-long sabbatical Down Under and took the field at half-time.
"It's nice to see him back in the shape he's in. He just came home on Monday and was at training on Thursday night. You can see as well as I can that he looked after himself. Obviously he needs a bit of game practice and ball handling but otherwise it's great to have him back.
"It's a good baseline because that was quite competitive for this time of the year. I'm sure Armagh are as happy as we are - they were missing a few key players."
According to Kernan that will be the case for a while yet although they must start their league defence next weekend.
"We'll be a little under-strength going into the league and hopefully we didn't pick up anything else there today. It would be nice to pick up two points in our first match. You have to win your home matches and hopefully we can do that against Kildare. Then we're away to Meath the following week."
Harte was pleased at the huge attendance but not altogether surprised, saying: "Crazy. But isn't it a lovely day and a lovely setting for people who want to see football? You might have anticipated this seeing as there were 11,000 to see us in Ballybofey last week and ourselves, and Armagh were always going to draw a crowd. But isn't it great to have this opportunity to play football at that level at this time of the year?"
The O'Byrne Cup football final in Navan yesterday also attracted a big crowd with close to 10,000 fans seeing Meath, with new manager Eamonn Barry and several new players, beating Offaly by 3-14 to 0-14. In Munster, Cork defeated Kerry by 1-9 to 0-6 in the McGrath Cup final at Páirc Uí Rinn.
