Last night's game was likely the right result on the balance of what was served up. From an Armagh persepective there are a couple of positives, the 2 O'Neills are as good a footballers as there are anywhere at the minute, and I think Turbitt if given a run of games has a potential about him to be a very good player. Rory Grugan has added a bit more again to his game and is a decent footballer. Campbell if relived of the captaincy may come back into a bit of form, if not then he may need to be an impact sub.
Outside of those above and potentially Aidan Forker, the rest of the Armagh squad blows hot and cold. It was no surprise to see Morgan taken off, he walks a tightrope every game and is a yellow card magnet with poor and indisciplined tackling, though this is something our backline can all guilty off. We conceded 7 points from frees last night and 2-15 in total playing with a blanket defence, so thats a poor enough performance for the system deployed. Those 7 frees though are criminal in the modern game, we cannot give teams 7 points for free per game and its bad positioning from our backs, and it extremely poor and lazy tackling. The 14 men behind the ball last night negates the detrimental impact of substitutions which had to happen in my opinion. We brought on players who have county level experience so they simply have to improve their tackling capability and not cough up so many scores. Tyrone left a few scores out there as well. With 14 men behind the ball we should also have been able to position players better to stop direct runners penetraring the spine of the pitch. So that was a concern that is still lingering.
We need to improve from restarts as well, we coughed up 4 or 5 scores from bad kickouts. We all seem to agree on this as well.
Finally our forwards need more men left up, the focal point of the attack needs help. Donaghy won ball and feed a support player for years for kerry, so I agree that there seems to be no evidence of his role in the coaching set up, quite simply we dont employ a support player, this needs looked at. Yes we need to look at opposition set up etc, but I feel that the opposition have little to do to work us out and that needs to change. Id like to see 2 players left in the full forward line and a support player just in front of them, that would also stop the opposition from pushing so high up the pitch when we are defending. Too much space presently and not enough support.