In all of the years that have passed since, you’d do well to come up with a greater sliding doors moment than Armagh and Galway’s last Croke Park meeting in 2001.
The first year of the qualifiers and the first truly heavyweight clash. Galway, champions of 1998 and beaten finalists the year before; Armagh, the two-time Ulster champions who had pushed Kerry all the way to extra-time in a replay the previous summer.
There was drama before the game started with Armagh left stranded out in Na Fianna on the Mobhi Road, waiting for a garda escort that never came and arriving at the ground in a state of panic, according to Oisin McConville in his autobiography, published six years later.
