Three years on from one of their most infamous meetings - even by their standards - Tyrone return to Armagh for a League fixture the first time since.

Back in 2022, Tyrone were the reigning All-Ireland champions for the round two Allianz Football League Division One tie. This time it’s Armagh. In the end, Armagh scored a six-point victory in front of more than 14,000 that essentially set the tone for Tyrone’s season but the story of that game was not in the winning or losing - it was in the five red cards that referee David Gough flashed, four to Tyrone.

The game was wrapped up when a melee broke out late on and Gough showed no mercy, dismissing Tyrone quartet Michael McKernan, Kieran McGeary, Peter Harte and Padraig Hampsey along with Armagh’s and Greg McCabe.

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It reignited a rivalry that, while it certainly wasn’t extinguished, hadn’t burned fiercely for well over a decade having peaked in 2005 when they met three times in the Championship; a draw and a victory each but with Tyrone taking the ultimate honours after eliminating their neighbours in a classic All-Ireland semi-final.

That year’s Ulster final replay had seen Tyrone pair Peter Canavan and Stephen O’Neill sent off, only to have their red cards rescinded, along with Armagh’s Ciaran McKeever, with he and teammate Paul McGrane subsequently earning bans on review along with Tyrone’s Ryan McMenamin.

McMenamin, having been cited for kneeling on John McEntee’s chest, had his eight-week suspension later thrown out by the DRA, with his case aided by a letter from the Armagh player. Such conciliatory acts were the exception between the two counties at the time, and McMenamin played as Tyrone knocked Armagh out a few weeks later.

There’s still a lingering bitterness in Armagh over Diarmaid Marsden’s sending off in the All-Ireland final two years earlier, also subsequently rescinded, which Joe Kernan insisted cost his side two-in-a-row.

But after 2005, the rivalry cooled, largely due to Armagh’s decline.

Tyrone may not have been as competitive at the back of the Championship in the 2010s as they had been in the 2000s, but they were still getting there regularly and picking up Ulster titles. Armagh scored an unexpected victory in a 2014 qualifier as Mattie Donnelly was sent off for Tyrone, but the counties’ Championship encounters dried up, with the Red Hands winning a relatively rare meeting in the 2017 All-Ireland quarter-final by a whopping 18 points.

But the bite returned on that afternoon in February 2022. Tyrone were back in the Athletic Grounds for a qualifier tie later that summer and their reign was abruptly ended as Armagh knocked them out, making for the sharpest exit that All-Ireland champions have made in the back door era.

There was some measure of revenge the following year as a final day victory in Omagh relegated Armagh from Division One and they repeated that at the same venue in an All-Ireland series group game that summer, an evening on which Rian O’Neill, currently absent from the Orchard squad, was dismissed. Remarkably, it's the only defeat that Armagh have suffered in 70 minutes in their last 20 Championship games.

After Armagh knocked them out three years ago, then joint Tyrone boss Feargal Logan said “dealing with success, it’s not easy and we saw it all year really.”

Already there are signs of that in Armagh this year. A win over on Saturday could shore that all up, but if they’re slipping, Tyrone will only be too happy to hasten their fall.

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