Armagh v Laois: Another big weekend for the championship begins this afternoon with the Bank of Ireland All-Ireland football quarter-final between Ulster champions Armagh and Laois and continues tomorrow with the Kilkenny-Galway hurling semi-final.
Armagh and Kilkenny have a bit in common. Long-running teams who recovered from disappointing championships last year, they both used All-Ireland under-21 success to freshen up their line-ups and went on to win the National League.
Since then provincial titles have been added but performance levels have been disappointing once pushover victories against poor opposition had been dispensed with.
So both matches hinge on the improvement that the two favourites can make against potentially dangerous opponents. Armagh's situation is, however, both more satisfying and more perilous. Their path to the last eight has been long and hard, involving six matches, all against recent All-Ireland semi-finalists.
This afternoon they face a Laois team that shows signs of having picked up momentum after a frustrating Leinster final.
But luck has been Armagh's friend recently. Despite having failed to maintain the form of a successful National League campaign they managed to win a fifth Ulster title in seven years. Refereeing errors came to their rescue in both final and replay, spectacularly in the latter.
Even last week, Central Council got into a flap over the DRA's acquittal of Ryan McMenamin and decided to run away from the Paul McGrane suspension, leaving Armagh pretty relieved as they face up to a team with the season's form centrefielder.
With McGrane the task of keeping tabs on Noel Garvan and his partner Pádraig Clancy will be demanding enough; without that totemic presence Armagh would have been in terrible trouble, weakened as they already are by the injury to John Toal even if the return of Martin O'Rourke adds to the ball-winning capacity in the area.
There is conflicting evidence about the likely trend of the match. On the one hand Armagh have been compared to the Meath teams of old in their ability to resist running attacks. On the other hand just over a year ago Fermanagh pressurised Armagh's defence by running at pace at the wings.
That ability to play with dash and no inhibition is within Laois's compass and reports suggest the team will spread the play and concentrate on the flanks, but they won't be playing the Armagh of 2004.
For a start, the Ulster champions were down to 14 men for half the match against Fermanagh and coping with galloping opponents on a hot day while a man short is different from doing the same with a full complement.
Secondly, Armagh have more pace at wing back with the addition of Aaron Kernan and Ciarán McKeever to the team, and thirdly, last year's defeat was caused as much by the complete failure of the attack as it was by pressure at the back.
It could be argued that failure came after a brilliant display against Donegal whereas in the season to date Armagh's forwards haven't been in the best of form. But unlike in the final quarter of the Fermanagh match, Joe Kernan's side have been at least taking their chances when it matters.
The ability of Oisín McConville and Steven McDonnell to take killing scores at the end of afternoons during which they've struggled was crucial in punishing Tyrone's inability to finish off matches.
Laois are buoyant after the comeback against Derry but have had to make changes because of injury. The jury's still out on how quickly Beano McDonald is recovering his form after the long rehabilitation after a broken leg but at least he will be fully fit, unlike Kevin Fitzpatrick and Chris Conway in recent matches.
The mood in the county is very upbeat with bigger crowds at training than were there two years ago in the Leinster-winning year. There's no doubt Mick O'Dwyer's team has some players in inspirational form.
Ross Munnelly has been one of the forwards of the year and has been working to vary his tendency to turn inside when on the ball and use the wings to a greater extent.
Laois need to be the second-half team they were in both the Derry and Dublin matches but will they be significantly ahead of their formidable opponents going into the closing stages?
If Armagh are still in touch by then they'll win and it's hard to imagine them not being there.
ARMAGH: P Hearty; A Mallon, F Bellew, E McNulty; A Kernan, K McGeeney, C McKeever; P Loughran, P McGrane; M O'Rourke, J McEntee, O McConville; S McDonnell, R Clarke, B Mallon.
LAOIS: F Byron; A Fennelly, D Rooney, J Higgins; C Begley, T Kelly, P McMahon; P Clancy, N Garvan; R Munnelly, B Brennan, B Sheehan; D Brennan, S Kelly, B McDonald.
Referee: J Geaney (Cork).
