Kieran McGeeney is unhappy with how Ulster football is perceived outside the province.

And he fears the bad press it receives could eventually lead to crowd segregation at games.

Speaking at the launch of the Ulster championships in Newry, the Armagh manager says he has grown tired of the 'ugly football' label that's often associated with the northern province.

"If any other province got the same descriptive words, it would be seen as an 'anti' thing for that particular part of the country," he said.

"It's unfortunate. I suppose I know, coming from the North, what that kind of talk can do. I don't like it. I find it degrading. I find that TV stations and newspapers that allow it, unfortunate, that people can be segregated like that.

"There's never a good end to it, because they create something that is not really there. It's one of those things like religion, that people fight over when they all believe in peace and God.

"I just find the TV and newspapers that allow it. . . I just think it's a bad way to be about the sport.

"I hope we don't get to the point where we are segregating our supporters because of where they are from. But if we keep talking the way we do, people will see that (segregation)."

McGeeney, who played club football in both Armagh and Dublin and also managed Kildare, continued: "I am lucky in the fact that I was in the changing-rooms down south and in changing rooms up north.

"I have seen people's perspective of how different teams play and what they do. How we look at things and how things are, are completely different. That's frustrating.

"I played for a long time, 17 years, and I would still maintain - and everybody laughs at me for it - the physicality that I had from the top teams down south would be far in excess of the physicality that you get from northern teams."

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