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The Armagh Perspective
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| Former Armagh team manager Peter Makem. |
THE All-Ireland winning Offaly team of 1971 and 72 seldom comes into the ratings as one of the great sides. Neither do the champions who preceded them for two years
in a row - Kerry in 1969 and 70. Also Meath and Cork in recent times have won back-to-back All-Irelands but those sides scarcely spring to mind when considering the
all-time greats.
The ultimate teams of the past 40 years are always Down, Kerry and Dublin, with Galway following up even though the Down side in question, that of '60 and '61 won a
"mere" two All-Irelands. Part of the reason though a small part, is the fact that they were the first side from the Six Counties to make the ultimate breakthrough.
But the larger reason belongs to what I consider to be a specific Northern characteristic that one could sum up in the term "romantic."
Northern football at its best is always well-organised individually. The sense of drama, the hidden plot, the inscrutability, self-expression and adventure are the
ingredients. They are characters in a play, creating a drama, rather than a mere performance. They are never moulded or confined, are unified by the heart rather
than the head are self-reliant and responsible.
The early Down teams stand above all other sides in the sheer expression of the individual. None of the other football teams termed great had this. South of the
border it appears that such characteristics belong to the hurlers. No football team remotely generated the excitement of the Down team for, if one studies the Kerry
four-in-a-row team whom many call the greatest, but forget that there was little standard at the time - a Dublin team on the way out, and an Offaly team on the way
up - so perfected were the movements that they eventually became boring and ceased to be a spectacle. It is the difference between the Liverpool team of Souness and
Dalgltsh and the Manchester United side of Best and Law. Or the difference between England of '66 and Brazil of 70. One is manufactured, the other free-born.
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| Mickey Linden and James McCartan (junior) - "star quality." |
Spectacular individual artistry and self-expresssion in Gaelic football seems to be quite peculiar to the North. This is not to demean players like Mick O'Connell,
Jack O'Shea or Colm O'Rourke - or Jimmy Keaveney the closest approximation to Northern flair. But can any of these match the sheer ball artistry and inventiveness of
a Peter Canavan, a Frank McGuigan, Sean O'Neill or Paddy Doherty, the exuberance of James Mccartan (senior), Mickey Linden's similar qualities, or the excitement
generated when James (junior) is on song.
These possessed the ability to do the unexpected, to constantly perform on the edges of the impossible, extracting great scores out of next to nothing. Why should
an Armagh man be saying all this, running the risk of being named a collaborator, especially when the modern Down teams were too close for comfort, and have the
audacity to repeat their father's deeds? Or when the provocative flags and emblems are hoisted on this side of the Clanrye, and liable to cause a breach of the
peace?
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