Oisin O’Neill insists the notion that Armagh have failed to fire in big Ulster Championship games is an unfair one.
He also stressed that their six-point win over Tyrone in the League will count for little when the fierce rivals clash in Sunday’s eagerly-anticipated Qualifier battle in the Athletic Grounds.
One of Ulster’s heavyweight sides will be gone from the All-Ireland Championship on Sunday afternoon following their lacklustre showings in the provincial series.
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Armagh suffered a 1-16 to 0-12 loss to Donegal in Ballybofey with O’Neill joining his brother Rian for the second half while the younger O’Neill sibling also had a goal controversially ruled out by referee Maurice Deegan.
Tyrone, meanwhile, relinquished their grip on the Anglo Celt following their 11-point loss to Derry in Omagh with the Oak Leafers succeeding the Red Hands as Ulster champions.
The Orchard County have tended to thrive in the Qualifiers, but they’ve only won three games in Ulster during Kieran McGeeney’s eight-year tenure as boss, but O’Neil rejects the idea that they’ve struggled to put their best foot forward on the big days.
“I don’t think it is fair,” stated O’Neill.
“If you look back at the game, we had more than enough chances to win two games and that is on us as players that we didn’t execute those plans. A lot of work has gone on to fix that in the meantime.
“Naturally, we were disappointed by how we performed - obviously we wanted to put on a better performance.
“It gave us a good chance for reflection, everyone knows you take more from defeats and more learnings and we have been lucky enough we got six weeks to try and put those learnings into practice.
“I suppose after the Donegal game we sort of hit the reset.
“We had six weeks and there was no hangover as such from the game. Everyone knew that there was a chance to put your hand up and maybe if you weren’t in the 26 that day to jump into that or into the starting team or whatever it was.
“So, we just trained really hard for a couple of weeks after it. These are the games that we want to play in, we all want to play in the big games and they don’t come much bigger than this.”
Armagh began their Division One campaign with statement victories against Dublin and Tyrone, but their win over their near-neighbours was marred by an unsavoury melee at the end of the game.
Referee David Gough issued red cards to Tyrone’s Michael McKernan, Padraig Hampsey, Kieran McGeary and Peter Harte as well as Armagh defender Greg McCabe.
Over 14,000 spectators were in attendance for the round two League meeting between the arch rivals and Sunday’s Championship clash is set to be a sell-out at the Armagh City venue.
With fellow Division One sides Mayo and Monaghan also lurking in the Qualifier draw, O’Neill was convinced Armagh would draw another top side in the first round, but he insists their previous win over the All-Ireland champions won’t have a bearing on Sunday’s tie.
“None - this is a totally different game,” insisted O’Neill.
“Tyrone were only back and probably in the middle of hard training then and probably just had more work done, but no it is a level playing field for everybody.
“To be honest we haven’t focused much on the Donegal game it has been about ourselves and how we can get better and what we need to work on ahead of Tyrone.
“I was sitting in the car park outside work, probably a few minutes late going in, because of the draw.
“We had the view that more than likely we were going to draw against a really, really good team and it was no shock to us that we got Tyrone.
“We had prepared for a Division One team and hopefully we are ready now.”
The Crossmaglen clubman also believes that the best is yet to come from this Armagh team despite the fact that they’ve only won one of their last five competitive games after a promising start to the campaign.
“I would argue that some of the games we lost in the League, we actually played better than we did against Dublin and Tyrone at the start,” added the Armagh midfielder.
“For us, it is just about being clinical with our shots.
“That period of time that we owned the ball at the start of the second half (against Donegal), it wasn’t good enough and we know it will not be good enough against Tyrone.”
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