Preview: Canny Kerry can quell semi-final newbies Armagh

In the midst of another post-mortem on the Kerry-Derry debacle, Jack O'Connor cited their last championship meeting with Armagh as an example of what Gaelic football could be - or once was.

That was the game, back in 2006, which probably heralded the end of Armagh's time as a nailed-on All-Ireland contender and marked the moment when Kerry got a handle on the Ulster uprising.

Kieran Donaghy, in his breakout summer as an inter-county target man, fired home the game's critical score, Kerry's second goal shortly after half-time and then stood over goalkeeper Paul Hearty, snarling. It was a roar of Kerry defiance in the face of the northern upstarts. An empire strikes back roar.

There was plenty of sulphur in the air that afternoon. It was also the day when Paul Galvin and Armagh waterboy John Toal engaged in a UFC grappling match by the Hogan Stand sideline, Joe Kernan frantically trying to break them apart, before himself falling into a rather heated dispute with linesman Gerry Kinneavey.

This weekend, Donaghy will be in his Armagh top and peaked cap, attempting to plot the downfall of his own county.

"We'd love to go back to that era," O'Connor said in his press briefing earlier this week. "That was an absolutely epic game, one of the games (outside of All-Irelands) that stands out in my head. But football has changed dramatically in the meantime and we had to change with it."

The Kerry manager has warned us to expect a different kind of match this Saturday, more in line with what we've become used to.

O'Connor had again been fielding questions about the now infamously tedious quarter-final win over Derry.

State-of-the-game debates are a constant in Gaelic football - and there certainly has been plenty of time to engage in them