New to posting, but have followed both the club and county forum for years.
Most of my thoughts have already been expressed by others in terms of the bitter disappointment felt after Sunday.
However, I've just re watched the game and oddly it's makes for better viewing second time round.
When we played direct attacking football, we were a threat, and we asked real questions of the Donegal defence. Unfortunately we didnt do this enough, and I can't understand how having worked so well throughout the league - why we kept resorting to slowing the attack and recycling deep into our own half.
On second watch, the pick of our players were Forker, McCabe, Morgan, Grimley and Rory Grugan who came close to a MOTM performance IMO. Their work rate and ball carrying from deep defence and into attack was excellent.
Rafferty's shot selection for kick outs were overall good. Ultimately we lost the mid field contest, partly because we were physically outplayed around the centre, but also because we broke the ball for Donegal on countless occasions.
Ethan contributed well when he came out of goal and was reliable under the high ball.
I don't like picking on individual players, but it was not Jemar Hall's day. Soupy should have been on at half time if not before.
Many many questionable refereeing decisions. Rian's yellow was soft and I cant understand Deegan's thought process in giving a free out for Rian's goal, particularly given he was stood 20yards away. There were multiple dubious second half frees that undoubtedly frustrated the Armagh lads, and ultimately changed the momentum of the game after starting the second half with real intent.
Overall the better and more experience team won but by Jesus, whilst he is a great player, Murphy is a total yap who is constantly in the face of other players, contrary to the popular belief that others target him.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I agree we got too caught up in the league game in Letterkenny and the events that followed. The emphasis should have been seeing out 70 minutes of football and giving some of the subs game time. But that's easy to say on reflection.
I feel for the players. Us supporters have expressed our disappointment, and I can only expect they are feeling this 3-fold. They seem to come under disproportionate amounts of criticism from outside of the county, often in the form of personal attacks - it must be hard for players to sound this out and focus purely on the game at hand.
Hopefully we get a good draw, regroup, revert back to the high tempo, attacking style that we all enjoyed during the league and who knows .... see you all in June.