Ulster SFC Final: Keith Duggan assesses the prospects of Armagh and Tyrone as they prepare for round two.

With Armagh and Tyrone, the more often they play, the more intractably they seem welded together. That they should be the last counties battling for provincial honours, locked in the cavern on the Jones's Road long after the other tribal formalities have concluded, confirms the undeniable if somewhat supremacist view that the Ulster football championship is a breed apart. That alone among the old competitions for local glory, it matters more.

If Armagh were deemed all but indestructible before the drawn game, the inscrutable calmness with which they went about forcing a replay looked almost supernatural to many observers. And how not winning that game affects the psychology of the Tyrone team will only become clear during the tensest moments of today's showdown.

Armagh were to all intents and purposes killed at the end of the replay. Tyrone did everything right and yet left the field having suffered the more serious setback. Stephen McDonnell's goal was further evidence he is one of those vampiric sportsmen whose heart rate seems to slow during the crucial seconds.

With three Tyrone defenders surrounding him, he managed to get possession and took his score, his right foot curling around the obstacle of a Tyrone leg as he delivered the goal.

The drama of that strike brought one back to the closing seconds of the 2003 All-Ireland final when McDonnell had manoeuvred himself into a similar goal-scoring scenario only for Conor Gormley to literally save Tyrone sanity with an immortal block.

The defence was fantastic but most memorable from that sequence was McDonnell's expression. He was astonished that anything other than a match-winning goal was the outcome because when he gets in those close-up situations, he feels unstoppable.

And last Sunday week was payback. Once McDonnell landed the goal and electrified the entire stadium again, an Armagh comeback seemed inevitable. But it was still unbelievable to witness it materialising, to see Paul McGrane claim possession, move upfield with such composure and then take the score because that is what was required. It was enough to send a shudder through all other contending counties, let alone Tyrone.

"Before the first game," said Down manager Paddy O'Rourke, " I backed Tyrone. I have changed on that now. Armagh didn't truly perform in that final yet they got through it and I would expect them to respond to that in the replay."

As they handsomely demonstrated against Donegal, Armagh specialise in second chances. They devour teams in replays. And yet the flatness of their overall performance against Tyrone has been held up as further evidence the machine is not so finely calibrated as it used to be. Last-gasp heroics cannot mask the fact at the end of normal time Armagh had been comprehensively outplayed.

Since that replay, Joe Kernan and the Armagh senior men have been politely answering questions based around the theory they are slowly and inexorably running out of gas. But then, Armagh as an ageing force is not exactly a new theory.

There was a widespread expectation they would gladly disappear into the hinterland after claiming their historic 2002 All-Ireland, an assumption which blithely overlooked the kind of iron perseverance that made them contenders in the first place, not to mention the ambition Kernan had shown with Crossmaglen. No more than the hurling men of Clare, Armagh footballers will brook no instruction on when their time is up.

But certain facts are undeniable. Armagh have a hell of a lot of football played this season. They were out against Mayo in the league semi-final on April 17th, played Wexford on their way to a first league title on May 1st, comfortably defeated Fermanagh on May 11th and then went down to the wire against Donegal on June 12th.

They served notice of intent in that replay but while they were victorious against Derry in the semi-final, their performance was lacking the dynamism and sense of unstoppable velocity that is the stuff of vintage Armagh.

However, none of those matches were lightweight, and as Kieran McGeeney noted during the week, "unless Armagh are hammering teams, we are going badly".

The other factor about Armagh is that since pulverising Wexford, Kernan has been instinctively favouring senior men, with Enda McNulty coming to prominence during the Donegal series and impressive league players like Paul McCormack and Ciarán McKeever dropping back into the reserves. Although strength in depth has always been one of Armagh's greatest assets, there is the slight suspicion that already the championship has diminished the options available.

"That is particularly true now that John Toal has been ruled out for the season," believes the RTÉ analyst Martin Carney. "Joe had been using both Toal and Philip Loughran in rotation to good effect and that option has been taken away now. The other major concern is the health of Ronan Clarke. Since he retired early after injuring his back against Donegal, he just hasn't been firing with the same freedom he showed during the league and perhaps Armagh's schedule has meant he hasn't had time to recover properly.

"And I just felt I detected a sign against Derry that they are not moving as smoothly as we know they can. Resilience is one of Armagh's great qualities but this replay is almost certainly going to be incredibly tense again today and it is hard to see how the cumulative effect of all these games won't punch against them sooner or later."

During the hot days of last week, Carney met a football man from his playing days on the steps of a pier in his native Donegal. From Moy, the man had kicked football with Armagh yet was inclined towards Tyrone and the subject of Francie Bellew and Stephen O'Neill was raised.

Ostensibly, the concession of five points from play seems like proof that the redoubtable Armagh full back was bettered for the first time since Kernan handed him the orange jersey. But another perspective is, as Carney heard it, that "O'Neill just had one of those days that do not come around very often".

It is a view O'Rourke shares.

"Every defender meets an attacking player in that kind of form now and again. And if he is being fed good ball, there sometimes isn't very much that can be done about it. It will be hard for Stephen O'Neill to replicate that display and I would expect Francie Bellew to pick him up again in the replay. Joe Kernan would have that kind of faith in him."

Carney believes that Armagh may opt to place Enda McNulty, enjoying a fresh burst of form, on O'Neill.

And there are other considerations for the defending provincial champions. During the draw, Brian McGuigan spent a lot of time operating between right full back and right half back.

"Kieran McGeeney stayed back and played the conventional centre-half role, but with the way Tyrone used McGuigan and Brian Dooher, he ended up neither one place nor the other. And it has to be expected that Armagh will take measures to counteract it this time around."

Tyrone are not without worries of their own. Although Mickey Harte is optimistic that Peter Canavan may be able to feature at some point in the replay, there is no guarantee his injury will withstand the full-on nature of the contest.

The timing of Canavan's injury is cruel given his spectacular announcement of the old form during the wipe-out against Cavan. But the drastic deterioration in form of Canavan's blond-haired protege, Eoin Mulligan, is a bigger worry.

In Tyrone's All-Ireland-winning year, Mulligan enjoyed a telepathic understanding with Canavan and looked odds on to assume the leadership role. But the player cannot tap into that vein of form at present and with league find Mark Penrose also failing to make an impact in the drawn game, pressure will come on the Tyrone attack to produce the scores if O'Neill is shackled.

"But then, you look at what they did to Cavan, 3-21 with just one wide, and it is clear that they have fearsome potential," Carney says. "I would say they were sickened by conceding those two goals the last day to Armagh and they are a mature enough team to accept it and to set about atoning for it in the replay."

It could be an odd kind of game. Word from Ulster is that they will travel in fewer numbers and a Saturday provincial final all seems slightly off-kilter. The one certainty is that it will be hell-for-leather and there is a suspicion the would-be champions across the land will be crossing fingers and hope that the Northern neighbours clatter each other until they are barely able to stand. O'Rourke laughed grimly at this hope.

"I don't think it will do either of them any harm. Both those teams are very fit and very tough, mentally apart from anything else. Obviously, someone is going to lose and it is going to be more difficult for that team. But I fully expect at least one of them to feature in the All-Ireland final and whatever happens in the replay won't break them.

"Tough games of football just set these teams up for more. It's what Armagh and Tyrone are all about."