'We're not a bad team overnight' says Armagh Ladies co-manager Darnell Parkinson in wake of league final defeat to Kerry

Despite the 4-14 to 0-11 loss at Croke Park, Parkinson – who manages the team alongside Joe Feeney – still has plenty of faith that Armagh can lift the All-Ireland title this summer.

“Obviously we'll have to regroup now after that, but look, we're not a bad team overnight,” he said.

“We're not a bad team off the back of that one performance there, it's very much a case of now the real hard work starts; the girls have worked really, really hard from December to now, but at the same time too, we probably still have a little bit left in the tank.

“We said at the start of the year there was no point in shying away from it, the All-Ireland is our target, it has to be our target. We've been in two league finals now, back-to-back, the semi-final last year, and as I said, we are using Kerry as that sort of standard and something to aim towards, that both teams have followed a very similar path through, and as I said, Kerry lost in the final last year and went on to win the All-Ireland, and hopefully we can do the same.”

Although the score-line doesn’t make for pretty reading, and Kerry were indeed worthy winners, the key difference came in front of goal, as Kerry were ruthless in finding the net four times, whilst Armagh missed several goal chances at the other end.

"At half-time, I think we had 20 attacks to Kerry's 16, we didn't score off 15 of our attacks, so that was the difference,” Parkinson reflected.

“You're playing a team in Kerry, who are a really, really good attacking team, they're going to kick the ball, especially in a place like Croke Park, on a nice day like that, you know they're going to get chances, you just have to hope that whenever you get your own chances, you take them.

“Today, Kerry took pretty much every one of theirs, and we took very little of ours. Look, that's not taking anything away from Kerry, they were really, really good today, they showed exactly why they're All-Ireland champions.

“What we said to the girls at the end in the huddle is that Kerry were in this position this time last year, obviously not that big of a score difference, but look what they went on to do. So, if we can take anything from it, that's what we have to take out of it, that there's potentially a lot more to come down the rest of the season if we just learn as many lessons as we can from today.”

Parkinson says that while it will be tough to raise the spirits of the team, they will get a needed week off, before coming back to prepare for the Ulster Championship final in May.

“We already had a planned week off after this final, regardless what way it went, which may or may not be a bad thing.

“I think the girls now just need to go and let off a bit of steam, but stick together as a group, which is most important thing, do what they have to do in their week off, and we'll hopefully regroup.

“We'll obviously have a lot of time now to sit down and watch the game and go through it before we meet up again, and then it's a case of whenever we do meet up, you know, forensically go through the video and take as many lessons as we can from today.”