Ben Crealey rallies Armagh to second All-Ireland title

Waking up as an All-Ireland winner this morning, Armagh midfielder Ben Crealey felt that a decision he took to abandon his family's traditional sport of choice for football had been justified.

The Orchard County won the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship for just the second time after they defeated Galway 1-11 to 0-13 in the decider yesterday.

Rallying was Crealey’s first sporting love but that had to be put to one side when he started playing senior football with his club, Maghery Seán MacDermott's.

"My Dad never kicked a football in his life. I’d take him out in the garden a few times and he’s not a great sight to behold with a football, but in a rally car he’s different," Crealey said.

"I grew up racing go karts and rally cars and football was always sort of a second thing for me until I started playing senior football with my club."

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, he said it was a difficult choice to prioritise football over rallying when he was called into the Armagh squad.

"Rallying would’ve been my family sport, so it always felt a wee bit more natural to me compared to football, so it was hard to step away from it.

"But mornings like this morning make it all worth it," he said.

However, it was a much different sort of family affair for Jarly Óg Burns, whose father is GAA President Jarlath Burns.

In the run up to the final in Croke Park yesterday, Jarly Óg said he and his father did not speak about the match at all.

"It’s weird dynamic in our house. To be honest, there is just zero talk about football. That’s just the way it is because it’s such a big part of our lives when we go out of the house.

"Whenever we’re in the house we just nearly want to get away from it. And he knows - he’s been a player - that you don’t