Early morning sessions on top of countless hours in the gym made for a good story, although the truth about the Armagh training is more along the lines of someone on a weight-loss course.

That was one comparison made by manager Kieran McGeeney in response to some of the more exaggerated claims of recent weeks: no one on the Armagh team is training more than three or four times a week and certainly not any harder than McGeeney himself did 10 or even 15 years ago.

“Talk to anyone who’s even trying to lose a bit of weight,” said McGeeney. “If you’re not training three or four times a week, it’s no good. Anyone who is even just keep-fit orientated will train three or four nights a week. Minimum. And you look at an amateur cyclist or rower or triathlete or boxer, they would train much more than Gaelic footballers, because that’s what is needed for that particular sport.

“Generally, most county teams train Tuesday and Thursday on the pitch, maybe two gym sessions of around 40 minutes, then something at the weekend. That’s what we do. Sometimes, coming up to the summer you might get away for a training camp, do two sessions a day at that, but that’s the exception rather than the norm.”

Training schedule

That didn’t stop reports emerging of Armagh taking on some Herculean training since McGeeney took charge this season: some people even claimed to have seen copies of the exhausting schedules.

“Well I showed them our exact training schedule, but a lot of people just aren’t interested in the truth,” McGeeney said. “Like we were training 10 or 12 times a week, at six in the morning, again in the evening, then two games at the weekend?

“The reality is that we’re training three or four times a week and that’s it. And there wouldn’t be any more than three hours’ contact time. Of all the teams in Ireland, I would say that we were probably doing the least.”

McGeeney highlighted one particular week in December when Armagh were reported to have put in 12 training sessions. “When actually we’d done two,” he said. “We had a Christmas party that week, and then Charlie Vernon’s wedding, so we probably did more drinking that week than training. As I say, sometimes people don’t want the truth to get in the way of a good story.”

There is, however, a level of commitment involved with the intercounty game which McGeeney admits does demand some considerable dedication, and yet the players wouldn’t want it any other way: “I know I trained harder, and longer hours, when I was training, than teams are now. And people made it out that I had a dour existence. But I think it was them who had the dour existence. Because there was no passion or love for what they were doing. If they didn’t want to be there, go home. I loved it. I couldn’t wait to get to training.

“I think most players would say the same. To have that type of focus and passion for something in your life is important, because most of us can have a very mundane existence. Get up, go to work. Some people are very lucky that they can also work at what their passion is, but most people don’t. We have that passion here at all levels. I think it’s a unique thing and one that should be embraced, not ridiculed.”

Promotion

McGeeney is clearly expecting nothing less than a demanding campaign in division three of the Allianz League, which they begin on Sunday with a home match against Tipperary. Armagh will be hotly fancied for promotion after being relegated last year, although McGeeney is taking nothing for granted.

“Every division is competitive, and if you lose one game, that means you have to win all your other matches. I don’t know whether we can say at this stage if we’re good enough to win seven games on the trot.

“We didn’t have a consistency last year in the league that we would have liked and if we do that this year, it will cost us. I’m not saying I don’t want our team to push on but the expectation out there isn’t measured in terms of where we actually are at the moment. We have to prove that over the next couple of weeks.”

McGeeney also says he hadn’t planned on being in charge of Armagh so soon – having being assistant to Paul Grimley last year and having spent six years with Kildare before that, but ultimately the call was impossible to resist.

Meanwhile, Armagh goalkeeper Philip McEvoy has confirmed his decision to retire from the intercounty game due to work and family commitments.