Nov 15,2024
Niall Grimley sinking to his knees at full-time in the All-Ireland final stands as one of the defining images of the 2024 All-Ireland championship.
The Armagh midfielder had overcome injury and then a period of languishing on the bench in the first half of the year to emerge as one of the stars of the All-Ireland series.
Highlights included the viral - if unrewarded - Odell Beckham Jr. style piece of fielding in his first start against Roscommon, a towering display in the shock semi-final win over Kerry, and then the unforgettable decider, where he forced over Armagh's penultimate point on the counter, the ball clipping in off the far post to make it a two-point game in a match where every score was seismic.
In many respects, Grimley and Footballer of the Year nominee Barry McCambridge, neither of whom earned a start in the Ulster championship, are emblematic of Armagh's stunning burst from the peleton to take a most unexpected of All-Ireland titles in 2024.
The Armagh footballers had long been typecast as doomed nearly men under the direction of an unlucky general, a narrative which held as late this June this summer.
Less than three months after another agonising Ulster final loss - provincial glory being regarded as their most realistic shot at silverware - they claimed the biggest prize of all.
Grimley, who turns 30 this year and overcame a horrific broken neck injury in 2022, is one of those longstanding Armagh players who sampled life in Division 3 long before the county returned to the top table. Back then, did he ever envisage seasons like this?
"When I was 21 and 22, starting off your Armagh senior career, obviously we were up and down in Division 2, Division 3," Grimley said, on being named the Gaelic Writers' Assocation Personality of the Year for 2024.
"You always at the back of the head thought, some day that will be us, and you believed it, but when it happens you are in disbelief, 'nah, I don't believe it.’
"And the whole time in the back of your mind you are thinking this is really something I want so bad and you are seeing the likes of Tyrone winning and the likes of Dublin and Kerry and stuff and you are thinking ‘Oh my God, will our day come?’
"That feeling at the final whistle, walking up the Hogan Steps with Forker and you visualise it all year and the week leading up to it and then it happens and you are in disbelief.
"Nah, it has been unbelievable, unbelievable moments that I will never forget for the rest of my life."
As in their first All-Ireland win in 2002, Armagh entered both semi-final and final as underdogs. There had barely been a cigarette paper between Armagh and All-Ireland final opponents Galway in three championship meetings over the previous three seasons.
The Ulster champions had managed to avoid defeat in general play in all three of those games, snatching unlikely draws in 2022 (before starting an unfortunate habit by losing on penalties) and in the 2024 round robin game, and edging the westerners out by a point in the 2023 round robin game in Carrick-on-Shannon.
Despite this, Galway entered the final as slender favourites, owing to what was perceived as a more star-studded forward line. Grimley attributes the ultimate victory to the grim resolve within the squad.
"They would have been licking their lips coming to play us," says Grimley.
"They knew our team inside out. We knew their team inside out.
"The whole lead in was, any point is a good score. We knew it was going to be tight. We knew it was going to be cagey.
"We played them in Sligo in the group game and that was one of the toughest games I played this year. We played five games. Aaron McKay made a huge block and I think they were going to go five or six up.
"Then we went up the pitch and scored a point and maybe brought it back to four."Huge moments like that. We got a wee bit of momentum. They had a short kick out and we ended up snatching it. I think it was Turbo (Conor Turbitt) or TK (Tiernan Kelly) who got the goal.
"Wee things like that, Araon McKay scoring the goal in the final - they are huge moments. We ended up topping the group, going straight to the quarter-final."
With the Armagh squad currently out in Miami as part of the obligatory - now legendary - All-Ireland winners' holiday, Grimley's parents will be on hand to collect his award from the Gaelic Writers this evening, in what has been a difficult month for their family.
The previous November, Grimley's brother Patrick, the 40-year old secretary of Madden Raparees GAA club, was killed in a car crash alongside his wife Ciera and their friend Ciara McElvanna.
The evening of the All-Ireland final, Kieran McGeeney had the team bus pause at the spot of the tragedy, with Grimley and a few others dismounting with Sam Maguire for a few moments.
"Obviously for them and my family this past year has been challenging.
."It was my brother’s one year anniversary on (last) Monday and we have the joint anniversary mass here (Tuesday past) before we go to Miami.
"It’s been a tough week but only for my wife, my family, my friends, work, Armagh management, Geezer, the impact they have had on me in the past year and stuff I am very thankful.
"For me it’s been a roller coaster year, the lows have been so low and the highs have been so high. Unusual year, unusual year.
"We are meeting all these anniversaries and stuff for the first time. Once you get over them you feel a wee bit……and obviously to be able to give my family and community and Armagh the joy of being able to bring the cup back to Madden, my club, it has been a distraction if that makes sense, and it’s kept people busy.
"And it’s brought joy to people when there was sad days and there was dark, dark days. Proud and privileged to be able to bring the cup back."
In a year where Ulster hogged every trinket that Gaelic football has to offer - save for the other provincial championships - the year ended with the province claiming the (temporarily or not?) revived Railway Cup in an entertaining final against Connacht in which the FRC's new experimental rules were trialled. (The Armagh lads still conspired to miss every penalty they took in the surreal shootout).
Grimley featured for Ulster over the course of that weekend and while recent champions tend to wary of rule change, the midfielder isn't excessively hostile.
"We were just getting used to these rules, the attacking mark and stuff like that and then they are going and changing them.
"I don't know. Maybe they have something against Armagh winning it, that’s why they are looking to change quick - I don’t know (laughs).
"Jim Gavin, he’s a man that knows Gaelic football inside out. If they do come true, you’ll just have to work with it.
"It looks like some of them definitely are (coming in), so we’ll have to prepare as best as we can when we get back training and stuff.
"It looks like the three up will stick and the two point arc. I don't know in January and December how many two pointers are going to be kicked with wet conditions, wind, soggy pitches.
"Our coaches will obviously be on the ball as well to try and exploit them or figure out the best way is to get a score and what the best way is to set up defensively.
"It will be a new challenge for players, coaches, also supporters as well in terms of the dissent and stuff, getting used to that.
"That's one thing I did like. It will cut out all the nonsense and hopefully the footballers will shine and the football will shine. It will be interesting to see what comes of it.
"The penalty was so severe there was no yapping at referees."
Regardless of rule changes, Armagh enter the 2025 campaign as the hunted.
Surprise All-Ireland winners who win Sam after a long wait tend not to mount especially brilliant title defences, at least in recent memory.
Tyrone's title defence in 2022 was infamously abject and even Pat Gilroy's Dublin side - who became perpetual winners later that decade - struggled to get motoring in 2012.
Nonetheless, Grimley insist that Armagh are hungry for more.
"That's one side of it where you are excited to get going again. The other side of it is where you have a target on your back.
"In the same way, Man United, when they were winning all those trophies year after year, every game for us next year is going to be huge and they are going to want to beat the All-Ireland champions.
"But in terms of each game, I know it will be hot and heavy and we are going out to stop these boys and we are going out with a target on our back, which is part of being a champion as well.
"That's why you have to admire the likes of Dublin, when they done it five or six years in a row. They kept doing it and doing it and doing it.
"That’s great champions. We won the All-Ireland once, so there is no point stopping now. You want more. You get selfish. You get greedy. You want more."
