Assistant manager Jim McCorry believes Armagh have been unfairly criticised for holding a warm-weather training camp in Portugal last week.

With new GAA rules precluding full-time training camps unless they take place in the 10-day period before a county's first provincial championship game, the Orchard County are set to be penalised by losing home advantage for one of their Allianz League games next spring. 

"I think people are jumping the gun about regulations and what the rules are," McCorry told the Irish News at this week's 2018 Ulster SFC launch.

"The way it was reported, people were judge, jury and executioner about us going away when we were trying to do something that the players wanted, that the county wanted, and we're being hung, drawn and quartered for something without anybody even fully speaking properly to us about it, so let's just see what happens through the proper process."

McCorry insists Armagh had broken no rules to the best of their knowledge.

"We arranged under the proper guidelines to be heading away at this time. Four weeks was our target prior to the championship game to give us that four days of intensive work.

"As regards compliance with the April (club-only) rule, we compiled with that in terms of all our players were released to the clubs for club games. The final game on Sunday - the day we came home - was changed to Monday night so the games could have been played then, but my understanding was that the clubs preferred to have these games deferred, so they could play these games at a later date with the county players with them."

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