senior cup final

The Palace Grounds side face Queen’s at Kingspan Stadium this afternoon (3.30pm ko) and coach Chris Parker feels this could potentially be the trickiest final Armagh have faced on their cup run.

“It is going to be hard this year as well, there is no two ways about it that you could look at this as the most difficult of the four finals against one of the most in-form teams in the country taking away their play-off final result,” stated Parker.

“It certainly would be something very special to win four in a row, only a handful of guys will have played across all four finals, and it would be fairly special if we could achieve it.

“At the start of the year the boys really don’t set goals and we don’t worry about the senior league that much, but they do see that day out at Kingspan as that big thing as very few club players get to play there and for that opportunity alone it is something they are very interested in.

“It also potentially leads into the Bateman Cup as well so you potentially get to test yourself against 1A sides next season.

“There re a lot of positives for the club, and it is something that we really look forward to, it would be special but it is going to take a massive effort to get there.”

Armagh missed out of the Division 1B play-offs.

“We wanted to try and push on in the AIL and while we finished sixth, when we looked at the table and some of our performances throughout the season, we felt we could and had the ability to finish higher ,” said Parker. “That is something that we are going to have to try to address over the summer and it is something that we certainly feel there is more in the tank.

“Hopefully we can produce a performance capable of some of the wins we had this year rather that some of