Armagh manager Kieran McGeeney described the ending to the Round 2A game with Louth as a ‘kick in the b******s’ but moved quickly to defend goalkeeper Ethan Rafferty after he failed to keep out Sam Mulroy’s speculative effort with the last kick of the game.“Listen, everybody makes mistakes,” said McGeeney after the one-point defeat in Innikeen. “We gave the ball away three or four times. If we hadn’t given it away, the ball wouldn’t have went in. It’s not Ethan, it’s all of us. It’s just the way you go. You win together, you lose together.”Louth manager Gavin Devlin was keeping a level head after his side dramatically secured a direct path to the quarter-finals in a fortnight’s time “That’s the key to this, this journey that we go on, you can’t get too high and you can’t get too low,” said Devlin.“Particularly after the low moments, you have to accept them. Because you’re going to get setbacks and if you set yourself up that you’re unbreakable or you’re unbeatable, and then you get beaten, well then the wheels come off.“It’s got to be one game at a time and know that you’re on a journey. I honestly knew after the first Dublin game that we would reset and go again. Because I keep saying it, these boys are made of the right stuff.”They proved that with their bounce-back win over Dublin and now this defeat of Armagh. Still, with only seconds remaining, you’d have been wagering the mortgage on Armagh, two points up, holding out.“Everything lends itself to a finish like that,” said Devlin of Mulroy’s buzzer-beater delivery from outside the 45-metre line that snuck in for a match-winning goal.“The hooter, the rules, the new product that we have. There’s a right bit of chaos in it all. I think the more that you embrace that chaos, and try to have a wee bit of structure in it too, the better off you are, because these games take on a life of their own.“There’s nuances that you try to coach but the team that can freestyle the best and play off the hoof and move and adjust and communicate well, it’s those types of principles that you need more than any sort of perfect script.”All of that said, Devlin still reckoned Mulroy’s shot was more than just luck.“Something we talk about around the two-pointer is that a lot of balls drop short, so we try to get a big man in there,” he said, referencing the pressure Rafferty was put under on his goal line.Devlin also paid credit to the Football Review Committee for devising the rules that have made the game so exciting and unpredictable. McGeeney, naturally enough, wasn’t as enthused.“That’s what the rules were designed to do,” said McGeeney with a shrug. “That’s what people find exciting.”