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1st July 2023
09:33pm BST

1 July 2023; Monaghan players Jack McCarron, 13, and Conor McManus celebrate after victory in the penalty shoot-out of the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship quarter-final match between Armagh and Monaghan at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile[/caption]
"We don't make life easy for ourselves," said the 36-year-old.
"There's always been no more than a kick of a ball between ourselves and Armagh. We showed a bit of character and a bit of fight."
"It's the desire to play for Monaghan and to represent the people of Monaghan. You look at Darren Hughes, Karl O'Connell, two or three kids at home and still journeying into play for us. That is what it's all about."
"It's not easy," he said of the shoot-out, "You go up and you score your first one and you're thinking that's my job done but it came back, I'm just glad it didn't come back a third time."
McManus also explained why he went high with both of his penalties.
"Everybody tells you to go low, and keepers will always dive low, very few keepers will dive high. It's alright when it works.""You know it's the last play," he said of the late free he won, "Conor Lane has told us that. I suppose you just want to get yourself on the ball. I'm probably doing it a lot longer than a lot of lads that's out here. I'm not too sure I'd have been standing up to that ten years ago." Meanwhile, Monaghan manager Vinny Corey said that the team hasn't practiced penalties. He also hailed his team's veterans McManus, Hughes and O'Connell in particular. "They're warriors," said Corey. "No we didn't practice penalties. Sometimes you can do more harm than good practicing them. You can't replicate that, unless you had a sea of orange behind the goals in Cloghan. We backed the boys. We knew the players we had for the penalties, and we had every faith we had to score them. "You had Darren Hughes and Karl O'Connell - 35/36 years of age. We took Karl off because he got a bang on the back of the head, he wanted to get back in. They're warriors. Them boys are built for it." "Then you have Manzy, he's the ultimate clutch player, probably Monaghan's best ever clutch player, and he's done it again."
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