Ulster SFC Quarter-final Armagh v Donegal: Keith Duggan looks at how Donegal v Armagh football matches have changed dramatically in just a few short years.

On the eve of All Souls' Day in 1999, Donegal met Armagh at the Athletic Grounds in Armagh city and despite trailing by five points in the second half they began their league campaign with a one-point victory. The performance of a slender and elusive young forward named Steven McDonnell was encouraging for Armagh, but did little to disguise the core failing.

Seized by some inexplicable paralysis, they failed to score from the 40th minute and bowed to the customary as Donegal stormed back, with John Gildea boldly kicking a point that concluded matters on a score of 0-10 to 0-9.

That game closed a trinity of November meetings between the two counties in the late 1990s. A Donegal victory was the common theme. In 1997, the counties had engaged in a full-blooded and borderline violent encounter in freezing and atrocious conditions in Lurgan. The visitors prevailed on a weird scoreline of 0-12 to 3-1 and, after the worst of exchanges, Armagh full back Colm Hanratty was rushed to hospital with a broken leg.

Donegal manager Declan Bonner described the afternoon as "a championship match played on a quagmire in winter". The Ulster renaissance of the early 1990s had begun to cool and the visceral loathing with which both counties tore into one another in the chill of November seemed to embody all the local animosity and passion that rendered the Ulster game perpetually unfathomable to the outside world.

It was light years away from the kind of sweeping panache with which Galway had won the All-Ireland in 1998.

Although both counties held uncertain places in the football firmament, Donegal were a sprightly league force under Bonner and improved steadily, robbed of a 1998 Ulster final title thanks to Joe Brolly's last-minute goal in the rain.

Armagh had not even appeared in an Ulster final since 1990, when Donegal beat them by a point and their mediocre form over the following summers hardly indicated they were any closer to attaining their first provincial championship since way back in 1982. Donegal expected to challenge in Ulster finals before too long, but when they did, in 2002 and 2004, they could not have imagined that it would be orange shirts that would block their progress.

They could not have imagined that in the space of half a decade, Armagh football would have intensified from a bright but flickering presence to a force as blinding and powerful as the sun. The entire province felt the heat of Armagh football and is feeling it yet.

"I remember when we were training for the 2002 Ulster final, there were all these stories going about the place about the sessions the Armagh boys were putting in and how big they were," remembers the youngest of Donegal's 1992 All-Ireland medallists, Jim McGuinness. Now 31, the Glenties midfielder witnessed the transition of Armagh from uncertain bystanders to rock-hard contenders.

"I think we were probably too respectful of them that day. Like, they were already a greatly changed team and the focus with which they played was admirable, really. I don't care what anybody says, you can be 14 stone and get a hit from an Armagh player of equal weight and it is pure muscle mass. It adds up. If you try and run the ball through them, it gets to the point where it is disorientating because you can see orange shirts coming from all angles.

"Then when they trap you in the corner, they are masters at just circling, keeping the arms raised and letting the player get himself into trouble with the ball. We felt we played a lot of the football against them that day, but we just couldn't distract them, we couldn't knock them off their game-plan."

The crucial moment in that 2002 collision probably coincided with a terrific second-half goal by McGuinness, which he made after shipping a series of shoulders as he rushed through.

"In the championship, a goal at that stage would upset a lot of teams. With Armagh, you start thinking, 'God, another one now would be nice'. They just kicked the ball out and went about their business. They never panicked. That stayed with me."

Whether by accident or design, the rise of Armagh football comes shrouded in myth and mystery. Replicating their style of success has not been easy for other county teams as it is based on a sense of separateness, on deep and unbreakable dedication and on an austere and frightening mindset. None of these characteristics are often flung at the footballers of Donegal who have produced wildly talented and wildly inconsistent performances during the period that Armagh screwed a vice grip around their own destiny.

McGUINNESS CANDIDLY admits that, although his Donegal teams never feared any county, they were a group of peers rather than a team with clearcut leaders as exemplified by Paul McGrane, Kieran McGeeney and Jarlath Burns, the 1999 captain. However, McGuinness also plainly recalls Donegal teams almost casually having their way with Armagh teams that contained men of that calibre. Something changed.

"Armagh committed to something," he says. "They reached a point where they had enough and they made an agreement with themselves. They committed. I'm not sure when it was, but there is a rumour you sometimes hear that it was after a league game when we gave them a terrible beating in Ballybofey. They apparently stayed in the dressingroom until around nine o'clock that night."

The game McGuinness is referring to belongs to the middle of those 1997-'99 November encounters. It was flavoured with its usual local exoticism: 64 frees, seven yellow cards, 0-4 to 0-2 at half-time and lots of rain. Donegal won by 1-10 to 0-6.

Among the Armagh players on the field that day were Burns, McGeeney, Paul McGrane, Diarmuid Marsden, Ger Houlahan and Paddy McKeever.

"It was an embarrassment to us all," remembers Brian McAlinden, then co-manager of Armagh with Brian Canavan. "I think we must have stayed in that dressingroom for well over two hours. It wasn't so much getting beaten as the attitude on the field. Brian and myself were two years in the job and there was no sign of a real progression.

"Tempers were frayed that night and I suppose after a bad result, most teams would wait until Tuesday to trash it out. But there was no point. There was a full-blooded and frank conversation and a lot of things were said, a lot of things were questioned.

"It even came down to the exact role of the captain. It got that detailed. It was not a pleasant time, but I do recall that when we eventually left that room, there was a feeling that the air had been cleared and that we would move forward."

It did not happen instantly. That summer, Armagh were destroyed by Derry in the championship and were still prone to the kind of freezing that permitted Donegal to wrench that league match from them early in the following season. But the mindset was already established.

"It is clear that there was an unusual collection of players on that team," says McAlinden. "I always have an image of being in the swimming pool in Portadown one Friday evening with my family. About eight o'clock, Paul McGrane came in and began to do laps. It struck me because we had put in three savagely hard sessions during that week.

"And here was this guy on his way home from work on a Friday night in the quiet part of the season. What happened was that when younger players began to make it on to the panel, they instantly respected the kind of leadership and the choices shown by guys like Paul and Kieran. And there were others too. Like, for all his joviality, Benny Tierney was a fiercely driven competitor. They set the tone."

When Donegal met Armagh in the 1999 Ulster championship, Tony Boyle and John Duffy sauntered in for two goals in the first five minutes and yet another afternoon of infamy was on the cards for the Northern county. This time, however, Armagh did not get lost in their complex maze of insecurities and in the end it came down to Donegal substitute Michael Hegarty to save the day with an equaliser.

"Least I haven't played my last game for Armagh," said Burns with black humour in the car park that day. "I dunno. We seem to have this self-fulfilling prophecy of doom in Armagh. You keep thinking something terrible is going to happen - and it did. Donegal came back twice."

In the replay, they permitted no regrets and, inspired by Marsden, they claimed a close match with the kind of icy composure that would later become the Armagh trademark. Then they rolled Derry and Down and Burns collected the silverware on an emotional afternoon.

From that point, Armagh's expectations and performances just soared. They took Kerry to extra-time in the All-Ireland semi-final of 2000, but a dramatic loss against Galway in 2001 brought an end to the McAlinden-Canavan ticket.

They had delivered back-to-back Ulster championships and lost narrowly to teams that went on to claim the All-Irelands, but the demand in Armagh, internally and externally, was for perfection.

"I suppose we had spent three years bringing the team to the point it reached in 1999 and we had not much room for manoeuvre," McAlinden says.

Joe Kernan stepped in and adding the Crossmaglen X factor to the existing framework, Armagh progressed inexorably to the All-Ireland championship.

In demeanour and public pronouncement, the team has become even more inflexible in self-examination since that triumph. They have lost just a handful of significant games since winning their first championship.

The shock exit from the Ulster championship to Monaghan in May of 2003, the All-Ireland final by the closest of margins to fierce rivals Tyrone that September and last year in that thrilling engagement of football fantasy against the team that packed the killer punch, Fermanagh.

Players such as McGrane bore each loss with grim stoicism and just vowed to punish themselves harder the next winter. Perhaps the reason those losses so rankled is they caused a strain on the new reality and brought to mind the old days, when soul-destroying losses were the stuff of Armagh football.

THE ONE TEAM they have not let off the hook since their re-invention has been Donegal. "In Armagh, even when I was playing, we always thought Donegal, no matter what, had at least one good game in them and they seemed to save it for us," McAlinden admits. "We used to leave the field against Donegal wondering how we lost."

In 2003, with Brian McEniff leading a cavalier young bunch back to the threshold of glory, Armagh were fortunate enough to win that season's tough and compelling All-Ireland semi-final. But in last year's reprise, in front of 67,000 people in an Ulster showdown that was moved to the capital, there was no luck.

It had been against Armagh in his third league game in charge after a 10-year absence that McEniff was struck by how utterly the game he had mastered as player and coach had changed. "Only then did I realise the intensity. To be honest, I wasn't up to speed," he would remark.

As ever, McEniff adapted in fast and charismatic ways, but the last Ulster final, Armagh's fourth win in six years, was a stinging riposte to the general feeling that Donegal somehow owed Armagh. The orange shirts played with magnificent and precise detachment and afterwards gave no indication that their latest provincial acquisition was anything more than a step on the path, nothing worth getting really excited about. It was a job, was all. Donegal went home to think again.

The possibly apocryphal story about the Donegal defender hitting an Armagh forward what he imagined was a fairly hefty shot only to meet the enquiry: "Are you tryin' to tickle me, young fella?" seemed to say it all. Donegal, for all their football, had a way to travel before they could touch Armagh's mental wavelength. Their season did not recover from that jolt.

Tomorrow, Clones will deliver the latest chapter in the rivalry, which has been much less one-sided that the cold display of results suggests. Armagh are league champions. Donegal, in their almost amusingly contrary way, got relegated after coming close to winning every game and actually defeating All-Ireland champions Kerry. None of that will mean a thing.

"I think Donegal will be too cute to go out for revenge," predicts McAlinden. "They will just play the game. The talent in Donegal was never underestimated by Armagh and certainly there is a feeling that if Donegal would apply themselves like Armagh, they would never be far away."

As McGuinness puts it, "Armagh always fear Donegal because they are never sure what team is going to show up".

And that is the crucial difference. Armagh have shown up with formidable regularity over the past five years and much like the vintage Mike Tyson stepping on to the canvas, although opponents know what to expect, it does not make it any easier.

More than any county, Armagh have kept Donegal locked in Ulster and the relationship has gone full circle since those raw-knuckle November league games of distant memory. And they have not known a victory against Armagh since Gildea nonchalantly hoisted a ball in the cold air all those years ago.

Only one hell of a scream will break the trance.