'Do you want one of these?' - Armagh's famous half-time reckoning

Eamon Mackle, liaison officer and team fixer, was a keen medal collector and included in his haul was a 1934 Armagh county medal won by a Young Irelands side featuring his father, Dan.

One day, he spent a significant amount of money on a batch of six medals, amongst which was a Celtic Cross from Wexford's 1916 All-Ireland triumph.

As the Armagh players sat with their heads bowed in the dressing room, Kernan started the recovery process with a few words. Then he went to his bag of treats and pulled out the plaque he had received for finishing second to Dublin in the 1977 All-Ireland race.

In that moment, it served no purpose other than to remind him he was a loser.

'Do you want one of these?’ he asked, before smashing it into pieces against the wall.

‘Or do you want one of these?’ producing the winning medal that Mackle had snagged at an auction.

Shoulders that had been slumped were soon raised. Eyes looking for the floor started searching out teammates, fists being pumped. ‘We can do this,’ those reassuring glances said.

Kieran McGeeney’s message to his troops was clear. The whole situation wasn’t good enough, but he couldn’t stomach that the Kerry players were sauntering around Croke Park without a glove being laid on them. Paul Grimley reiterated the point – ‘get tight, get tight; let them know they’re in a game.’

While belief was being restored to the Armagh players, the ‘Sunday Game’ studio was having none of it. They got wind of Kernan’s plan with the medals, but they saw no turnaround in sight.

‘I saw Gerry Adams in the crowd there in his orange colours, surprise, surprise, and he could have told the Armagh full-back line, "Your problems haven’t gone away you know,"’ said Colm O’Rourke.

‘I swear to God, my mother would be