'Awesome' Armagh but Monaghan 'have a chance' in final

Former Armagh All-Ireland winner Oisin McConville says Monaghan "absolutely have a chance" in the Ulster SFC final, despite Armagh's impressive dismantling of Down in Sunday's semi-final.

Monaghan fought back from 10 points down in normal time to beat Derry 1-30 to 3-23 in a dramatic semi-final on Saturday to reach the decider for the first time since 2021.

Armagh, meanwhile, booked their place in a fourth successive final with a thumping 3-33 to 0-14 victory over Down at St Tiernach's Park and will go into the decider on Sunday, 17 May as favourites.

But McConville believes the Farney men will put it up to Armagh as they have been galvanised in the championship after a tough league campaign.

"Of course they have a chance, absolutely they have a chance," McConville told the GAA Social podcast.

"They have weapons and it will be a cracker of a final, Monaghan will bring plenty. They are coming from a different place and when they won there was a celebration, rightly so, but there was no reveal about how they went about it, all it was about was we ticked that one off and we have a home Ulster final.

"The year Monaghan have had, and the bounce they have had since the championship is massive."

They will have to produce a complete performance to see off the Orchard County, who in scoring 42 points, broke the record for the highest single-team score in an Ulster SFC match, a mark they set in last week's quarter-final win over Fermanagh.

McConville described their performance in Clones as "awesome" and acknowledged they will be clear favourites to end their wait for a first Ulster title since 2008.

"Armagh have a few players playing at the peak of their powers, Oisin Conaty [who was named man-of-the-match after kicking 0-5] is next level at this stage," he added.

"If you think of last week, the one thing you could have thrown at Armagh was too much of a drop off in the second half, they couldn't afford that again and what did they do? [They] kicked on and it was a pretty awesome performance from Armagh regardless of how Down were."