Your unique memories of All-Ireland Final day 2002

pablo

Well-Known Member
@pablo - Fermanagh 2004: were we over confident? Did we think we had to just turn up? Who knows?n.

@PatMustard Not sure. It was a bizarre game. From our point of view, almost everything that could go wrong went wrong. We started off well and Marsden was unlucky with a goal chance that probably would have finished it off at an early stage. It is one of two games(Tyrone 2003 the other) that I remember for the number of soft frees awarded against us-a succession of them bringing Fermanagh back into it. But we still should have dealt with that-but seemed to lose our pattern of play and never seemed to ‘find our groove’. I remember hearing something at the time that Armagh had a schedule that involved alternating weeks of high intensity training and were a bit concerned that they would have to change their routine when the qualifier schedule was announced. I might be (probably am) wrong about that. We did seem off focus, maybe the afternoon match ups with Tyrone playing immediately afterwards were a factor?
I know there was a lot of praise for Fermanagh and the ‘lovely football’ they played. I think a lot of that perspective was caught-up with the romance of the underdogs doing well. I honestly thought they were ghastly to watch, adopting pretty much the same philosophy as recent Fermanagh teams. Uber defensive-at one time all (all) of the Fermanagh team were behind their 45’, and limited to breaking out and lunging into a tackles to draw a foul, which referee was happy to give. Any Games involving a Fermanagh victory then and now, are usually low scoring affairs.
Having said that, Stevie Mc was very lucky to have stayed on the field.
A bonkers game. Just should not have happened. Sometime back, someone on this forum said a very true thing;- in the 2008 Ulster final, a considerably weaker Armagh team beat a Fermanagh team that was a better side than their 2004 counterparts.
 

PatMustard

Well-Known Member
@pablo - I remember Fermanagh v Cork in 2004 and their forward play in particular was great to watch. Beat Meath on that run too. Our QF wasn’t free flowing though, nor was the two semis v Mayo.

I wasn’t even able to see Fermanagh match, couldn’t even get to a radio as I wasn’t in the country. Only watched it on tape when I got home, and never watched it again. So don’t remember much about it, other than Enda’s sending off and Brewster’s winner. Oh and McGeeney scoring - we always seemed to lose when McGeeney scored.

The Fermanagh loss might have been similar to Donegal in 2014. They had their eye on Dublin in the semi and we almost caught them in the QF. Maybe Fermanagh caught us because we had our eye on Tyrone in a semi?
 

JoeH

Well-Known Member
Overall it was a poor standard of football - poor passing, poor shooting and shows how much the game has moved on. It was tense for supporters that's for sure given the occasion.
Armagh forward line was superb and just needed better ball played in. That six would give all existing defences their fill of it.
Our defence would not match today's forwards but they did what they had to do.
Also shows how Cluxton has redefined his role and just how much of an influence he has had in the Dublin setup - his experience is second to none at that level.

What really struck me though was the sheer number and vocalism of the Armagh supporters - absolutely superb.
 

PatMustard

Well-Known Member
I assume you're joking, either that or it's you that has been severely affected by this lockdown o_O:D

No I’m alright actually. Nothing unusual about my behaviour in lockdown.

Right, better finish doing these butterfly buns. Mrs M wants her toenails painting... (Oh frig, are we still on air? :eek:)
 

pablo

Well-Known Member
@PatMustard
I know there was a lot of praise for Fermanagh and the ‘lovely football’ they played. I think a lot of that perspective was caught-up with the romance of the underdogs doing well. I honestly thought they were ghastly to watch, adopting pretty much the same philosophy as recent Fermanagh teams. Uber defensive-at one time all (all) of the Fermanagh team were behind their 45’, and limited to breaking out and lunging into a tackles to draw a foul, which referee was happy to give. Any Games involving a Fermanagh victory then and now, are usually low scoring affairs.
Having said that, Stevie Mc was very lucky to have stayed on the field.
A bonkers game. Just should not have happened. Sometime back, someone on this forum said a very true thing;- in the 2008 Ulster final, a considerably weaker Armagh team beat a Fermanagh team that was a better side than their 2004 counterparts.


I know its an odd thing to quote your own post-but I have to make a correction here. My post was coloured somewhat from memories of the acute shock at that time and simple begrudgery. Not sure what masochistic streak made me do it, but I just watched that entire game, never had had seen a full recording of it. Have to say, Fermanagh did indeed play some lovely football that day and it was lazy of me to simply lump them with having the same approach as more recent Erne squads. We were shockingly lethargic and out intensity levels dropped after first 10 minutes. Still think that a switched on Armagh would have won handily enough-but have to correct myself and note that Fermanagh team did know how to play decent football.
 

Rufus T Firefly

Well-Known Member
Not sure what masochistic streak made me do it, but I just watched that entire game, never had had seen a full recording of it.

Respect for being able to do that. That Fermanagh team was a decent enough outfit, and really should have put Mayo to the sword, not once, but twice across the two All Ireland semi-finals. They paid the price for not having a free taker. I always felt that our great team was guilty of what many of our other teams were guilty of, i.e. lack of a killer instinct, and we were never really able to annihilate teams that way Tyrone for instance would, by wracking up over 20 points a game. I always felt that there were a range of factors that contributed to that defeat - some luck, some self-inflicted and the referee.

I'd be interested to hear your take on John Bannon's performance that day. My memory is that Fermanagh got an awful lot of 'handy' frees that were given out of sympathy for the underdog, especially in the first half, when it looked as if we were going to run away with the game, and we couldn't buy a free. As a result, when Enda had his moment of madness, they were still in touch and were able to sneak a result at the death, when we should have been out of sight.

I recall one incident in particular, where Ronan Clarke was running through the centre half forward position, heading for the Canal goal, and he was literally jumped on from behind and pulled to the ground and Bannon waved play on as the ball broke free.

Now I hasten to add, the result was largely self-inflicted, but Bannon's performance really irked. :mad:
 

pablo

Well-Known Member
Respect for being able to do that. That Fermanagh team was a decent enough outfit, and really should have put Mayo to the sword, not once, but twice across the two All Ireland semi-finals. They paid the price for not having a free taker. I always felt that our great team was guilty of what many of our other teams were guilty of, i.e. lack of a killer instinct, and we were never really able to annihilate teams that way Tyrone for instance would, by wracking up over 20 points a game. I always felt that there were a range of factors that contributed to that defeat - some luck, some self-inflicted and the referee.

I'd be interested to hear your take on John Bannon's performance that day. My memory is that Fermanagh got an awful lot of 'handy' frees that were given out of sympathy for the underdog, especially in the first half, when it looked as if we were going to run away with the game, and we couldn't buy a free. As a result, when Enda had his moment of madness, they were still in touch and were able to sneak a result at the death, when we should have been out of sight.

I recall one incident in particular, where Ronan Clarke was running through the centre half forward position, heading for the Canal goal, and he was literally jumped on from behind and pulled to the ground and Bannon waved play on as the ball broke free.

Now I hasten to add, the result was largely self-inflicted, but Bannon's performance really irked. :mad:

@Rufus T Firefly I came across the whole game on Youtube a few days back. Had never before watched a recording of it and was just curious if my deeply bitter recollections of that day still held true. Fermanagh could play football. I was unfair to that team, their ability to play football and had not acknowledged that before. I still think that Armagh team should have wiped the floor with them, although as you point out we seemed rarely seem to do that to teams in the same way as Tyrone or Kerry.

I also still believe that John Bannon rather than referring the game, focused on referring Armagh. A series of soft frees brought Fermanagh back into the game after they looked like they could be blown away, after which we seemed to lost our momentum and became very disjointed. We did always tend to have a bit of trouble dealing with teams that ran directly at us-but this was really exacerbated by Bannon's referring approach that day

What I watched on Youtube was the RTE coverage with Marty Muppety and Kevin McStay as commentators. Listening to the latter of this pair during the game would, as said in more genteel circles, sickened yer hole. He constantly cooed over the 'fine refereeing display'-and savoured it as a performance long overdue and badly needed in the game for taking to task teams like Armagh. His reasoning for how the game unfolded was a simple one; Armagh struggled because John Bannon had ‘caught on’ to how we tackled and played the game. McStay had that sanctimonious tone of an auld parish priest who had just successfully petitioned to have Daniel O’Donnell play at Glastonbury instead of Iggy Pop and came across like he had spent too many evenings camped outside Armagh training with a 'down with this sort of thing' placard.
And this is one of my major hang ups from that time, the media fixation and their constant drip, drip , drip of insinuations against Armagh. As I said above, Bannon referred us and not the game. We found it very difficult to get a free. Having said that, we should have dealt with it. It did seem distract us, but we should have had enough in our tank to have dealt with it.
 
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PatMustard

Well-Known Member
Yeah I do agree with the drip drip fed bullshit from the southern media @pablo . It definitely got into referees heads and they unfairly punished us in games, with soft frees for our opponents.

Always recall McStay nearly wetting himself with excitement with Canavan’s point in 2005.

Lol @ Marty Muppety :D
 
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