Drab final shaped by Armagh's ferocious will

The 2024 All-Ireland final won't rank high in the all-time list but it provided one hell of an emotional crescendo.

Firstly, it's an incredible achievement for Kieran McGeeney and his players after enduring so many setbacks and so much criticism that they now find themselves top of the pile.

There's enough documented evidence in black and white in this column over the past four months - and longer - that I didn't fancy Armagh as All-Ireland contenders.

But then I was in good company, given the road signs that sprang up outside his house after last year's championship exit and the fact that some clubs up there mounted an attempt to unseat him at the county board.

I had thought the Ulster title was probably their most realistic shot at silverware and the summit of their ambition.

McGeeney looked almost like a broken man when shaking hands with Jim McGuinness after that latest penalty shootout loss in the Ulster final.

We wondered at the time how would they have the stomach to recover from that. But it was almost like they were immune from pain at that stage. What was it Geyser said at the post-match press conference? Sometimes, your strongest steel is forged in fire.

Who knows what he said to them in that near 25-minute long half-time team talk in Markievicz Park? I'm sure the county board consider the fine cheap at the price this week.

The quarter-final win over Roscommon wouldn't have convinced many onlookers that they were witnessing the All-Ireland champions-in-waiting (and it was massively overshadowed by events later that afternoon). But there was a sense that some of the baggage had been lifted.

They had endured so much trauma at the quarter-final stage in the previous two years that a victory that day marked clear progress,