Small moments all add up in a game and Antrim manager Andy McEntee felt the breaks didn't quite go his team's way on Saturday as they fell to Armagh at Corrigan Park.

The Saffrons gave all they had in an effort to topple the All-Ireland champions, but ultimately fell short with 11 points the difference in the end.

Some chances came and went for the hosts, including a 20th-minute Kavan Keenan penalty that was saved by Blaine Hughes, who had just come onto the field to replace Ethan Rafferty, who picked up a black card for the challenge on Ruairi McCann.

However, it seemed to take an eternity for Hughes to come on as Armagh made the substitution and whether the delay had an impact on Keenan, it certainly didn't impress the Antrim boss who also felt the defender's later black card was harsh.

"He has to stand around for how long? That's not fair on a penalty taker," he said.

“Two and a half minutes, standing there looking at a penalty. That's not good enough.

“I know myself from being in that position. The longer you stand looking at it, the smaller the goals become. The ’keeper pulls off a good save - would it have made a difference? I’m not so sure. 

“I mean the black card on Kavan seemed very harsh.

“From a ball that was handled blatantly on the ground here, we end up getting a fella black carded. I didn't even see what happened. But as I say, we needed everything going our way and then a little bit of luck maybe to get a result here.

“But you couldn't blame the effort. And I'd say we probably ran out of legs a little bit too."

Certainly, Keenan wasn't blaming the delay for his shot being saved with Hughes diving to his left.

There were a few eyebrows raised when the corner-back stepped up instead of Dominic McEnhill who had been on the penalties in the league, but Keenan explained the decision was made for him to take a spot-kick should one arrive.

“Naw, look, time doesn’t come into it," the Ballymena man said.

"I was as cool and composed as I could have been, I couldn’t hear the crowd, I couldn’t hear the players talking in my ear. I’ve been there before, I’ve hit manys a penalty in soccer and Gaelic. It’s nothing new to me.

"People will slag me after it, the number 4 hitting the penalty. In training it was discussed, I was hitting the penalty, I was never gonna not hit the penalty if I got my chance. As a soccer ‘keeper, it was a great save. He was maybe there before I had it hit, I was always going there, I had one place to hit it and that’s the only place I was going.

“Dominic’s your full-forward and has hit them all year, but it was discussed in training, I was the man winning the shootouts in training. Unfortunately today I didn’t hit the back of the net, it’s a quality save. "Maybe I did leave it a bit high and a good angle for him to dive but if the penalty comes up again, I’ll hit it again."