Jarlath Burns leans against a dimly-lit doorway as the punters traipse out of MacCumhaill Park, all thrilled by what they have seen. The Armagh old-timer looks towards the forbidding skies for consoling thoughts.

"Well, I haven't played my last game for Armagh yet," he begins, breaking into a grin.

"I just couldn't believe what was happening when we went one ahead there at the end. I just refused to believe it. Really, we seem to have this self-fulfilling prophesy of doom in Armagh, you keep thinking something terrible has to happen to us again and . . . it did - Donegal came back twice to level it." He smiles.

Burns has seen some rare days on Ulster fields but never have 70 minutes been so helter-skelter as this, with the first 55 minutes based upon an astonishing mix of frugality and waste before both teams seemed to hit freeflow in the final quarter. What was the catalyst?

"I think it was just lads forgetting about everything, the occasion, coaching, whatever and just going for the ball. At that time of the game, real heroes emerge, fellas who really want the ball, who really go for it and as well as that it's usually the fittest on the team who come through as well to take the game by the scruff of the neck. But I don't know if we are happy with a draw or not."

Similar sentiments were ricocheting around the Donegal dressingroom, a litter bin of orange peels, bandages and aching limbs.

"God, just glad to still be in the championship. Probably threw it away in the first half when we were six or seven up. But that's football," gasps Jim McGuinness.

Declan Bonner, the manager, stands surrounded by ghosts of Donegal past, searching for final words on the latest twist.

"Two minutes to go and they led for the first time and our heads could have dropped and people could have written us off then, and have done in the past, saying there was no character in the side. But those boys came back and proved a few people wrong here at the end so, next Sunday, well, I'm hoping we can win it."

Armagh joint manager Brian Canavan had professed happiness that his team were still alive. "It was a topsy-turvy game but the way we started, you'd have thought we were out of the Ulster championship. But we clawed our way back into it and knew the goal opportunity would come.

Tony Blake, the Donegal goalkeeeper, ponders on the goal that came.

"I decided I'd stay on the line for the ball and it just took an awkward bounce. I definitely feel I should have done better. It's funny, I thought when I made the earlier save and then we went down and got a point that it was our day, that they just weren't going to get a goal. But . . . it's a strange game and strange things happen."