Sideline Cut: Almost a fortnight after the Ulster final replay, Armagh and Tyrone are coming to terms with the consequences of a complex rivalry that seems to embody the best and worst in Gaelic football.

Many predicted that the sheer physical toll of out-battling, out-battering and out-trash-talking one another might ultimately cost Ulster's finest a shot at All-Ireland glory but few remembered that the breakneck pitch of the encounter would be quite likely to also see the teams forfeit men. It was a miracle that more players did not walk in the last 20 minutes of a replay that left some observers feeling genuinely ill and others genuinely thrilled.

Returning to the field this afternoon without Riser (Ryan) McMenamin is a serious dent in the Tyrone defensive machine. Armagh have any number of options in terms of replacing Kieran McKeever but if Paul McGrane is sidelined for one month, then the much-coveted second All-Ireland might lie beyond the capability of Joe Kernan's men.

And a second All-Ireland title is the only adequate response for Armagh at this stage, the only inarguable vindication of a team who have come to inhabit a curious place in the football spectrum since the raw romance of their September rebellion against Kerry three years ago.

Not so long ago, Armagh were just the brand leaders of Northern soul, the sticky, defensively loaded, tactically disciplined style of football that could drive other teams and traditionalists to distraction. But over the past couple of years, Armagh have moved into a clearing and their Ulster final win, when they Armagh-ed Tyrone, seemed to crystallise that separation.

Rightly or wrongly, the Ulster final was about Armagh because (a), they won it and (b), they forced Tyrone to lose it. Tyrone have never been accused of being angelic and their relentless hounding of the aristocrats from Kerry in the 2003 All-Ireland semi-final gave rise to many lectures from the pulpit. But paired against Armagh, they left the field looking like victims, like another team mugged by the Armagh strong-arm tactics.

It seems clear the longer Armagh stick around as contenders, the more unpopular they will become. Part of the reason for that is there was a general expectation that after their surprise All-Ireland in 2002, Armagh would be happy to disappear into the hills around Crossmaglen and spend the next 10 years taunting Tyrone boys outside the hot spots of Dungannon or Belfast.

It brought to mind Anthony Daly's barbed and valid observation that the nationwide summer of love towards Clare in 1995 soured because the Banner folk "didn't conveniently feck off back to Doolin to play their traditional music until Kingdom come".

The same is true of Armagh. Nobody resented the most nationalistic and visibly oppressed GAA county in the Northern firmament having their day in the sun but several voices have objected to their subsequent ambition to leave a lasting stamp on the game. But those who expected them to retreat gratefully after 2002 blithely ignored the devout patience they demonstrated in becoming the best, the singular ambition that lies beneath Kernan's casual, affable demeanour and the fact we will never again see a GAA team who possess such a blue-flamed cause.

More or less all the complaints made to date against Armagh carry substance. They do have a mean streak running through them. They are masters of the kind of sneaky foul that the rules of Gaelic football not only tolerate but invite. They bitch at the referee constantly. They are hard, frighteningly hard. They bully teams. They can be maddening to play against because above all teams they recognise that collective mental discipline is the key, the secret, to winning Gaelic football games.

When Armagh players get involved in the kind of rumble that broke out to celebrate Peter Canavan's return a fortnight ago, you always suspect they are actually thinking their way through the madness, working out how best to exploit those uncertain, broiling moments when order has been restored. Armagh infuriate teams and madden neutrals because it appears that no matter what happens, they come out on top. Because Armagh do not blink.

You can hate all those things about Armagh if you like but to deny their qualities is simple delusion. Their bravery, their cold poise, the fact that every championship game they contest seems charged with absolute meaning, the fiercely proud and distinct sense of place they bring with them on Sunday occasions and their deathless pursuit of the victory: they are rare boys.

The nature of that Ulster final replay made most neutrals develop a sneaking hope that Tyrone would shade it in the end. But regardless of the nature and justice of the unholy row that left Tyrone with 13 players, the grave, majestic patience with which Armagh took what will go down as a defining Ulster championship from Tyrone was undeniably magnificent. In the draw, they produced 1-1 from nothing when it was needed. In the replay, over 10 inexorable minutes, they had the style and belief to kick six points. When Oisín McConville, pale and bloodshot as a snooker player, kicked the brazen point that left Armagh two points up and time running out, I felt a shiver down my spine. He did the same thing against Donegal in 2004. Armagh don't just beat teams, they haunt them and widen the illusion that you cannot beat them, that they cannot be killed.

Fermanagh, of course, proved the contrary last year. "Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy" was the advice the theatre critic Kenneth Tynan kept posted to his desk. Charlie Mulgrew instructed his players to embody the first three qualities and stayed nice and melancholy himself. Fermanagh played against Armagh as if they did not exist, as though they were a team they had never heard of, let alone were frightened of, and the rest was history.

There is every possibility that some other county - Laois, Galway, even Dublin - will replicate Fermanagh's feat. After the infamous replay against Donegal, Armagh somehow gave the impression that they had felt the cold wind of mortality out there on the field and September suddenly looked terribly far away.

But as the odds deepen against Armagh and the outrage becomes louder, I find myself rooting for them all over again. Armagh have never courted popularity and probably realised that a single All-Ireland victory would not change the geographical and spiritual sense of separation they have experienced both on and away from GAA fields. They are still outsiders.

With Armagh, you always get the sense they are fighting just for recognition, for a voice, for their forefathers, for the past. That's why when Armagh are about, it never feels like just a game. Armagh either grab your soul or they don't. And if they don't, you are missing out.