Enda McNulty: I don't like to talk luck but Armagh have been unlucky

Armagh have performed well in penalty shootouts but have been cursed by bad luck, according to former defender Enda McNulty.

Of the seven penalty shootouts that have occurred in the championship since the first in 2022, Armagh have, remarkably, been on the losing side in four of them.

Kieran McGeeney's team have been eliminated from the championship via penalties for the past two years, losing successive quarter-final shootouts to Galway in 2022 and Monaghan in 2023.

Not only that but they've lost the past two Ulster finals via shootouts, to Derry in 2023 and to Donegal this summer. Indeed, Armagh's only defeat in normal time in championship in the past two seasons came in the round robin loss to Tyrone in Omagh last year.

While Armagh's penalty-taking in their first two shootouts was poor, with only one from three converted against Galway in the '22 quarter-final and one from four scored in the '23 Ulster final, their stats have improved substantially since then, with 13 from 16 scored across the shootouts against Monaghan and Donegal.

However, their opponents have converted 22 of 24 penalties against them across the four shootouts, with only Gary Mohan of Monaghan and Derry's Paul Cassidy failing to score.

Losing four shootouts in the space of three championship seasons is an extraordinary stat by any measure but former corner back - and professional performance coach - Enda McNulty feels there's a large dollop of luck involved here.

"I think if you look at their performance, they've performed pretty well in them all," McNulty said on RTÉ Sport.

"It’s not as if they kicked one out of five, it’s probably five out of six.

"In some cases it has been downright unlucky. I never like to talk about luck, because I spend my whole life