In an age where it feels like every football game is scripted, the weekend reminded that the beauty about a game of ball is that it can still go rogue. In the moments after his team’s victory over Donegal, Galway manager Pádraic Joyce hailed the prospect of his team’s final showdown with Armagh as one that ‘football needed’. Its novelty alone ensures that and, while no one will argue that both counties’ place in the final is merited, the reality is that the goals that booked both their golden tickets were not the products of rehearsed plays, but instead gifts that just fell out of the sky.
Armagh, trailing by four points, looked all but done and dusted until that moment, in the 55th minute, when Rian O’Neill sent his kick for a point arching so high into the sky that it dropped short and seemed destined for Shane Ryan to cradle into his chest, but it popped out of the Kerry goalkeeper’s arms and Barry McCambridge was, quite literally, on hand to punch the ball into the net. From that moment on, Armagh, with momentum as their friend, were the better team and most likely winner but, without one ball in a hundred that Ryan would spill, most likely it would be Kerry who would be in the final. Paul Conroy’s under-hit kick for a point felt a bit like a scuffed goal shot that scuttled through the rough, rolled through a bunker and carried on its merry way until it lay in the bottom of the hole.
Were it to be interpreted through the rules of another code, VAR would .