Say what you like about that old misery guts Nostradamus, but nobody could accuse him of not having a sense of humour. Only someone with a healthy appreciation of the absurd could have seen to it that Drumcree Sunday, Armagh's most important Ulster Championship match in a decade, and the end of civilisation as we know it should all fall on the same day.

The great man's 16th century writings are disappointingly silent on the intricacies of Ulster football in the 1990s, but even Nostradamus in all his wisdom would have had difficulty foreseeing Armagh's passage into next month's Ulster final. Just goes to show you about the innate folly of big match predictions. Pestilence and plague are obviously much easier gigs.

True to their 1999 form thus far Armagh did it the hard way last Sunday. Conceding a penalty within a minute is not an approach that is advised in The Big Book of How To Succeed In Ulster but Benny Tierney's save was just the fillip that the men in orange needed. More than most, this is a psychologically complex group of players which feeds voraciously off the kind of confidence-boost an early save like Tierney's can represent. The suspicion always was that they would come on immeasurably after a win or two and last Sunday provided further proof of that.

Martin McHugh, one of Ulster football's wise old owls, said afterwards that so much of the success in Gaelic football is about hunger and few teams in recent years have approached the task in hand in such a starved state of mind as Armagh did against Derry. There was a maniacal quality to some of their defending particularly in a half-forward line that excelled in snuffing out the threat of a previously rampant Derry half-back trio. Once the platform was denied, the supply line to Derry's inside forwards dried up.

In the past Armagh have given the impression that they have been helped more than hindered by the aching of their fanatical support. In recent years this has led to the smallest of small triumphs being greeted with the type of ardour that should be respectfully be reserved for the Second Coming or a smile from Brian Mullins. On one memorable occasion, so the story goes, the players were carried shoulder high to the dressing-room after winning a winter National League game in Meath.

What the gnarled and battle-hardened natives made of it is anyone's guess but no prizes for guessing which county was still in championship training come July. Armagh's support is still manic but there are small signs that the players at whom it is aimed are learning to turn it to their own advantage and use it as a launch-pad rather than a crutch. There is a tremendous drive about this current crop of players and there are signs of a genuine bandwagon starting to roll. So far this summer they have been behind going into the last few minutes of each game - the drawn game and subsequent replay against Donegal and last Sunday against Derry - but each time they have finished incredibly strongly to win.

A knee-jerk reaction is to attribute that to an extended run of good fortune but more analytical observers will see a sense of common purpose fuelled by a steely determination that runs much deeper than that.

And then there is Diarmuid Marsden, a forward of such stunning virtuosity Marsden has now joined the Canavans, Fitzgeralds and Lindens of this world where you are respectfully known by your surname alone. He is this year's championship phenomenon. Debilitated by a groin injury that has prevented him from training for most of the summer he has had a talismanic influence in each of Armagh's three games thus far.

Last Sunday's winning point was only the latest in a series of breathless cameos. Anything his county do between now and next summer is hitched to his wagon and it will be an immeasurable loss to this year's championship if he is hampered from parading the full repertoire of his gifts.

Armagh enjoy going against the grain. The prevailing wisdom is that Gaelic football nationally is going through something of a fallow period. That current decline in standards was predated by a slowing down in Ulster that goes back as far as Down's 1994 All-Ireland. But with typical Northern cussedness, there have been signs this summer of an upturn that flies in the face of what appears to be happening in the other three provinces. There is a persistent hum of excitement about Ulster football that has been absent certainly since Tyrone's sweep to the All-Ireland final of 1995.

With the possible exception of the drab opener between Monaghan and Fermanagh there have been ripples of genuine quality in every other game - Donegal's false dawn of a start against Armagh, Derry's demolition of Cavan, Tyrone's swatting aside of Fermanagh and then the grand sweep of Armagh's win last Sunday. It is also interesting that while the calls for reform of the football championship become more shrill with every passing week, there is a level of satisfaction in Ulster with the system that leaves the province slightly out of step with the prevailing mood.

The fierce, bitter, local rivalries that characterise Ulster football thrive on adversarial, knockout contests. Victories are won and resentments are stored for another time and out they come again when they next get their chance. In the early part of this decade it was Derry and Down and then it was the collisions between Derry and Tyrone. The current system is one that has served Ulster football well now that the main protagonists can see that there is life beyond a provincial title.

It had been 22 years before last Sunday since Armagh had beaten Derry in the championship. They knew that if they could cast that monkey from their back the load they would have to carry through the rest of the summer would be dramatically lightened. But that avenue would have been closed off to them had this been only one of a series of round robin games in some new-fangled championship system. Armagh knew they needed to beat Derry in 70 minutes of championship football last Sunday if they were to clamber out of Ulster's foothills. If they had been denied that one-off, do-or-die opportunity the championship would have been a poorer place.

There are now four weeks until Armagh's first Ulster final since 1990 against the winners of next Sunday's semi-final between Down and Tyrone. As they begin their long wait, football obsessives in places like Keady, Lurgan, Silverbridge and Poyntzpass may while away some time thumbing through their dog-eared copies of The Collected Prophecies of Nostradamus looking for a sign, any sign. And when they get to the famous passage about the "great king of terror" who brings only heartache and disaster, they will break into a cold sweat as they begin to think about the mazy runs of Mickey Linden or Peter Canavan. Spooky.