Ulster SFC quarter-final; Antrim v Armagh 

(Corrigan Park, Saturday, 12.30pm, live on BBC2 and iPlayer)

FOREWARNED is forearmed and Armagh defender Paddy Burns insists he and his Orchard comrades will be taking nothing for granted when they face Antrim at Corrigan Park on Saturday.

The Forkhill native, who plays for Down club Burren, has gone into battle in the Ulster Championship as a raging hot favourite before and came unstuck.

In fact, back in 2018 when he made his Ulster Championship debut, Armagh headed to Enniskillen as sure things to defeat Fermanagh, but as they found to their cost, games aren’t won on paper or decided by betting odds as the Ernemen turned them over and in the process, taught them a valuable lesson.

Burns has experienced the highs and the lows in the orange jersey and the experience of scaling the mountain last year taught them what is required to get there, that the attitude must be right for each game and in the Ulster Championship especially, anything can happen. 

“We’ve been there before (as hot favourites),” he recalled.

“My championship debut was in Fermanagh, where we went in hot favourites and we didn’t take the right attitude into that game. We’ve had those experiences before, so it’s just about treating it as any other game.

“Antrim, they’ve got a home draw. They’re going to have the crowd on their side. It’s going to be a tight pitch, a tight, packed crowd. The atmosphere will be good and it’ll very much be hostile towards us, so we just need to find a way to perform in those circumstances.”

So much time was dedicated to the dispute over the venue for this quarter-final with Antrim insisting they would play it at Corrigan Park or not at all due to being plucked from the hat first.

Armagh were caught in the crossfire of it all as while they were supportive of the Antrim stance, it was out of their control with their own focus solely on the League.

It all played out in the background and even though the Ulster Council’s initial decision to switch the game from Belfast to Newry was met with stout resistance from the Saffrons, Burns always felt he and his teammates would be heading to the Whiterock Road this weekend. 

“If we were Antrim, we’d be doing the exact same thing,” he stressed. 

“A home draw is a home draw. It’s up to the powers that be to figure out in the future how to avoid similar scenarios for themselves.

“I would say they probably assumed it was going to be in Corrigan the whole time anyway. They (Antrim) were always going to get their way and rightly so. 

“It was a selfish part of me for a brief period when I saw Pairc Esler, I was rubbing my hands because it’s five minutes from where I live.”

With all of that resolved in good time, the only focus is now on the football and Armagh heads into this championship as the team to beat having annexed Sam Maguire last year.

However, there is still a sense of unfinished business with this Armagh team as back-to-back losses in Ulster finals by way of penalties still hurts and getting their hands on the Anglo-Celt Cup remains a major target for Kieran McGeeney’s men. 

But the spotlight has shone on the Orcharmen much brighter throughout the league and that will not change throughout Ulster.

Handling that pressure is an added challenge this year and although Burns insists they are not the finished article, they have grown used to the greater scrutiny in 2025.

“We didn’t win this (Ulster) championship last year, so we’re not quite the hunted,” he countered.

“But, yeah, we’ve gone through the league being the hunted already. I would say that’s part and parcel of being previous champions, but we’ve got used to that across the league.

“We’ve played a number of teams who will possibly rightly feel they should have beaten us last year.  It’s going to be no different, I would assume, in the Ulster Championship or in any game we play this year.

“That’s just something that you have to get used to. You have to deal with and we’re learning that all the time, but there’s still plenty of learning to be done.”