Paddy Burns: Knowing All-Ireland fate won’t detract from Armagh’s Ulster Final bid

There’s no denying that having football games every week is exciting for fans, and it gives us plenty of action to sink our teeth into, but the fact that the draw for the group stages of the All-Ireland series was done on Tuesday, before the Final has even been contested, feels a bit rushed.

We now know in advance that the winners of Ulster will avoid being in the group of death with Derry and the Connacht champions, so the pressure is really on.

Donegal captain Patrick McBrearty was speaking at the Ulster Final media launch, and admitted that the situation isn’t ideal.

“It probably is a distraction,” he says.

“It’s not been mentioned in our dressing room, but people in general are on about ‘would you (Galway or Mayo) be better off to lose the Connacht Final than win it?’

“But, I don’t know. Knowing the Galway lads, I’m sure they’ll be going full-steam ahead to win a Connacht title.

“I don’t think losing those games can set you up well for the rest of the year — I’ve lost provincial Finals before and it takes a long time to recover from them, if you do [ever] recover from them. It’s really, really hard to get back on the horse.

“In terms of if we win or lose, I’ve not put much heed on it — it’s all about Armagh now.”

On the other side of the fence, Armagh’s Paddy Burns doesn’t see it as as much of a massive issue.

“I think regardless of the draw, you just want to go out and try to do your best, and try to win Ulster,” says the Orchard county corner-back.

“It’s a bit of an irrelevance in a way, because you’re not going to base how you perform in an Ulster Final on what’s happening next.

“To me anyway, it’s probably a bit of an irrelevance. Is it a distraction? No.”

Although the Armagh defender doesn’t believe that it is an overt obstruction for his team, he admits that he would be in favour of changing the current arrangement.

“Would it make sense (to have the draw after the Final)? Logically, yes,” he adds.

“But logistically, they have to sort things out I’m sure, so that they have an idea of who’s doing what and who’s going where.

“I see the merit in it, but I do think it would make more sense to put it after the provincial Finals.

“There has been very little talk about it (in our dressing room), although we haven’t trained too much since Saturday.

“We only had a bit of a get together on Tuesday, but legs are sore and fellas are tired, so tonight we will get going again.

“There hasn’t been much of a chat, but if you come back to me after, maybe it will be the big focus point.

“I think when you’re in a Final, those sorts of things aren’t really important; you just focus on the next game.

“Maybe that sounds naïve, or you don’t believe that’s the case, but I can tell you that it’s not a conversation that’s had amongst the players.”

Regardless of knowing who you could be playing in advance if you were to win or lose the provincial Final, the fact remains that teams won’t look that far ahead until this next game is decided.

There are plenty of examples in the past of squads getting caught on the hop because they were maybe looking too far down the road so, as far as Burns is concerned, Donegal is the only thing on their mind.

“Either way, we are in the All-Ireland series,” he concludes. “So we’ll just focus on the next game, and we’ll get there afterwards.

“We’ll look at who we’re playing and where we’re going and if we need hotels booked and all of that after the Final.”