And to think they won it too…
Hardly.
Jeans-gate swept the nation back in 2014. Armagh club Dromintee famously fielded a championship team consisting of middle-aged men, committee members and late call-ups against none other than Crossmaglen.
The controversy happened when Dromintee asked for a postponement to the round two Armagh SFC clash owing to a local wedding on the same day but, when that didn’t happen, a lot of their players didn’t show up for the game anyway.
Rather than risk being fined or banned and risking their underage teams not playing through a club suspension, a few good men rallied together to field any sort of team. They didn’t play the game though. Well, they did officially, but they didn’t.
Crossmaglen scored 1-8 without reply as the Dromintee men watched on so John McEntee took his team for a training session instead at their half of the field. The opposition had a kickaround amongst themselves.
It’s an old story but the brilliant BBC documentary, Crossmaglen: Field, which aired on Monday night perfectly captured some of the madness from that day.