The Gambler

I only recently got around to reading Oisin McConville's biography, written during last year's championship and detailing, among many things, Oisin's personal battles with an addiction to gambling and Armagh's battles with Tyrone. Although the text runs to a reasonable 204 pages the headlines at the time of its release treated only the writer's smashing of football's fourth wall to tell of the sledging dished on the pitch by Tyrone players. Conor Gormley and Ryan McMenamin in particular but also this year's captain Brian Dooher. In reality this is but a small sub-plot to the book, and serves only to identify these players with many others who, legend tells us, said much worse through the years. Even the title, The Gambler, makes reference to a part of the book which occupies less inches than the gripping football stories. McConville suffered, suffered badly too, with an addiction to gambling which left him in substantial debt and relying on freinds and family to avoid serious problems. And avoid them he assuredly did. Throughout so much of the book you're given the impression that McConville's ambitions in football had no counterpart off the field. While football was his life, he showed no motivation to achieve any success outside of it, as he moved between jobs, built up gambling debts, and then felt let down when the football side of his life wouldn't come to the rescue - for example when he writes of his need to sell his car only to find that the county board wouldn't replace it for him.

For football fans though, the main motivation for reading the book is to peek inside the Armagh team of the past decade. McConville considers the Armagh team "one of the greatest of the modern era". While the statistics show only one Sam Maguire in the past decade, it shows that in the historically level playing fields of Ulster the Orchard men have taken seven from the past ten Anglo Celt trophies. Not even Kerry have matched this provincial record. What Kerry have done, however, is win four of the past ten All-Ireland Championships. Tyrone and Galway have collected two each. Meath's tally of one matches Armagh's. Yet there surely is a greatness in the achievements of Armagh. The greatness of their revolution. McConville tells of training methods borrowed from Rugby League, including hated tackle grids where hard hits were given, taken and brought into Croke Park for big games. Armagh's taming of Dublin in 2003, the writer tells us, was down to a fear on Dublin's part to beat their markers to the ball - such was the ferocity of their clashes. Maybe so. Undoubtedly Armagh brought a level of fitness, physicality and professionalism which led the way for others. But perhaps the key word for Armagh is "intensity" - the oft used term employed by Joe Brolly in his analysis. McConville writes of a time when Joe Kernan spoke to his Crossmaglen players before a match with Mullaghbawn, instructing them to stare their marker in the eye as they shook hands before throw in, and to look right through them. This deathly stare was matched on the field with the "inches" philosohpy of winning every little battle. Everything.

But all that takes it out of you, and after a decade of football Armagh must be disappointed to have failed to match their fiercest rivals in mid-Ulster on the roll of honour. Maybe their time will come again this year, with Wexford to face this weekend and bigger teams to follow. One way or another, they've left their mark on the game and the competitions. McConville and co. seem to recognise that the good times have ended, but who knows, maybe the thought of Brian Dooher in the Hogan Stand is just the focus they need. Here's hoping.