GAELIC GAMES: Funny. On some days Croke Park rattles and hums. On others it just rattles. There were slightly more than 20,000 souls in the stadium yesterday. Sufficient for a league semi-final, but not enough to make a party.

Armagh duly advanced to another National Football League final, to be held next Sunday, and the fact that they have lost on three such previous occasions might be sufficient to overcome their anxieties about their championship date with Fermanagh, which they have red-circled in their diaries for a fortnight later.

Mayo went home with that sickeningly familiar feeling of having lost a big game in Croke Park, but with a good break between now and the start of championship action they wore the intense faces of men who would be rolling up their sleeves for hard work tomorrow.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. Armagh, who should be concentrating on frying bigger fish, should be off taking the sun at a training camp next week. Instead they meet Wexford in a novel league final. Wexford?

And what happened to the new rules, which were supposed to be specifically designed to stifle the northern style of play? Armagh scored 19 points yesterday, 16 of them from play, and looked in no way inhibited while doing so.

Ten of those scores came from a full-forward line which when things got tough just seemed to wade into the game and grab it by the scruff of the neck.

For a while it seemed every high ball which went into the Mayo full-back line was caught by either Ronan Clarke or Steven McDonnell.

"We pulled away when we had to," said McDonnell afterwards with quiet understatement. He had contributed six points to that pulling away.

"When the points had to go over the bar the likes of Oisín (McConville) and Paddy (McKeever) got going. We've huffed and puffed through the league, but we've found some form. We know we have a tough battle ahead of us next week.

"We had a tough league game with Wexford last year and we went down there this year and they beat us. Whoever wants it more on the day will come out trumps.

"The more big games you get coming up to championship though the better."

Mayo will look back on the day and wonder if their secret is out. Kerry discovered the weakness of the full-back line under high balls last September and it was obvious Armagh had watched that particular video recently.

Any doubt left by the scoring of the full-forward line was removed by Kieran McGeeney's marking job on Ciarán McDonald.

"Kieran McGeeney; people might say he had a quiet game, but we didn't see much of Ciarán McDonald. That was his job," said Joe Kernan afterwards.

Indeed, McGeeney paid McDonald the compliment of marking him with an almost feral obsessiveness, turning his back on the play occasionally so that he could better monitor and track McDonald's movements.

Removing McDonald from the equation greatly diminished the power of Mayo's attacking imagination.

For Mayo, who enjoyed the cut and thrust of a sprightly first half, which was full of energetic running and relatively harmless open play, yesterday was a lesson in closing out matches ruthlessly.

While everyone was bouncing about enjoying the new Croke Park pitch and looking fancy, Mayo had their chances and their keeper David Clarke made a couple of saves (one from a McDonnell penalty) which suggested Armagh would be denied theirs.

Down the straight, though, Armagh were just overpowering: stronger, more experienced and happy to take Mayo out of their way. "As a team the further the game went on we certainly improved," noted Kernan.

"Our full-forward line was playing well all day, but in the first half didn't get their scores. I think we played to form for about 10 minutes today."

That was sufficient, but will hardly scare next weekend's opponents, Wexford, who come to Croke Park riding a wave of some excitement. The novel final nicely bookends the league season for both sides. They met in the opening round in Wexford, with the home team winning by seven points.