GAA/All-Ireland SFC Semi-final/ Armagh v Tyrone: After the controversies and near farce of the Ulster finals it's safe to say football wasn't exactly looking forward to the likely third instalment of Armagh-Tyrone in this year's Bank of Ireland All-Ireland football championship.

In the interim, however, both teams have raised their games impressively so that tomorrow's match and the consequent unveiling of Kerry's All-Ireland opponents is awaited with a great deal of interest.

In the aftermath of Armagh's clinically executed win in the Ulster final replay, it was impossible to see Joe Kernan's team repeating the feat given the extent to which they had been outplayed by their opponents and the amount of outrageously good fortune required to survive both matches. But having watched the destruction of Laois in the quarter-final and the reawakening of Steven McDonnell and Ronan Clarke in the full forwards, the mood swing goes in favour of Armagh. Until Tyrone moved on to a new level in the second half of their first quarter-final with Dublin.

There are decent arguments to be made for either team this weekend and yet both managers have made puzzling selections in the light of recent evidence.

Armagh are the more settled unit, with a range of options covering each line of the team whereas Tyrone have improvised wildly, switching players up and down the field but in nearly all cases to good effect. Yet Kernan has dropped arguably the team's best man marker, Enda McNulty, despite Tyrone's inside line containing two forwards in Owen Mulligan and Stephen O'Neill whose form is ablaze.

Mickey Harte has redeployed Joe McMahon to full back despite the player's key role in limiting damage around centrefield in the Dublin matches and the questions that hang over his defensive instincts. Similarly Seán Cavanagh, who hasn't played near his best form at centrefield but who shone on the wing, finds himself back in the middle in a switch with Enda McGinley.

Harte's dilemma seems to be a superfluity of mobile players adept at operating on the fringes of centrefield but not enough to work the position conventionally against one of the most powerful, conventional units in the game.

This partly explains the selection of Brian Meenan at centrefield for his first championship start this year.

For a while during the National League he played the position along with Peter Donnelly but the partnership was dissolved by the summer. Meenan is a tough, grafting individual who can be expected to take the heat even if he's not a classical centrefielder, allowing McGinley and Cavanagh to run off him.

The other suspect area of the team is in the full backs. McMahon will compete with Clarke in the air but Harte made three changes in the line during the Dublin replay. Despite all of this improvisation, Tyrone have got the big changes in defence and centrefield right over the past two matches. Central to this is Conor Gormley's redeployment at centre back, which has hugely improved the steadiness of the defence.

Mentally Armagh have had a conspicuous edge in the matches so far. To have been down and out but still in touch in the drawn Ulster final was as much an achievement as the assurance with which the crucial, saving 1-1 was plucked out of almost nothing. Even allowing for the comedy of errors in the second half of the replay, Armagh's steadiness in the face of opportunity was remarkable.

It's hard to be convinced Tyrone have mastered the closing out of matches merely because they were too far in front of Dublin to be in any danger. But what we can be sure of is that Harte's team were better than Armagh the last time they played and had their efforts were undermined by outside factors.

Certainly Armagh have improved since but so have Tyrone. For McDonnell and Clarke, they have the reconstituted Mulligan and O'Neill. They also have Brian Dooher in top form and presumably a fired-up Peter Canavan determined to last longer than 60 seconds should he be brought on tomorrow.

There have been no signs of fatigue despite their (self-imposed) demanding schedule - in fact the regularity of the matches has tied in with Harte's philosophy of keeping fit on the ball. They have also emulated the season of two years ago in gathering a momentum that leaves them looking hard to stop. Too hard.

ARMAGH: P Hearty; A Mallon, F Bellew, K McKeever; A Kernan, K McGeeney, A O'Rourke; P Loughran, P McGrane; M O'Rourke, P McKeever, O McConville; S McDonnell, R Clarke, B Mallon.

TYRONE: P McConnell; R McMenamin, J McMahon, M McGee; D Harte, C Gormley, P Jordan; B Meenan, S Cavanagh; B Dooher, B McGuigan, E McGinley; R Mellon, S O'Neill, O Mulligan.

Referee: P Russell (Tipperary).