Classy Armagh team? In a Tyrone programme? How curious. "In the years since then, " it went on, "he did serious damage to plenty of Tyrone teams but always with style and class, playing the game the way it should be."

Eh? Curiouser and curiouser.

"That's why we'll miss him, " it finished. "From GAA followers everywhere to Diarmaid Marsden, a class actf Thank You! !"

That was it. No punchline.

No twist. Not even a jokey reference to the sending-off that helped swing the 2003 All Ireland final in Tyrone's direction. Just a straight up, no-messing testimonial to a retired foe. Almost made you go a little gooey inside.

Whether or not he'll be made to feel quite as welcome should the two worlds of mid-Ulster collide . . . be it in a provincial semi-final on 17 June or at another stage in the summer . . . probably doesn't need a whole lot of exploring. But it was, at least, nice while it lasted.

For now, though, Marsden has returned after two seasons away and he flew to La Manga with the rest of the Armagh panel on Thursday morning. It's their fourth time prefacing a season with a trip to the Costa Calida . . . Marsden's second . . . and in a weird kind of way is part of the reason he quit in the first place.

Not the trip itself, which he describes as an opportunity to achieve in five days what it would take three weeks to get done at home. More what it symbolises.

"When you're on the go for 12 years at county level, " he say, "it takes its toll. There's no point pretending it doesn't.

You just get fed up with all the rigmarole. The pressure involved in being a county footballer has just got bigger and bigger every year and I had just got to the stage [in 2004] where I'd given all I had to give. I suppose you'd call it burnt out, just going through the same process year after year. And when I hit the 30 mark, I just decided that was the right time to go.

"So much preparation goes into it and you're giving the best shot you can and I think it's understandable if, after a while, you just feel like jacking it in. That's what happened to me. The constant effort and time and commitment and energy that I had put into it were all things that you need to be putting in, otherwise you'd get nowhere and I just felt I couldn't do it any more."

It wasn't a knee-jerk thing.

Indeed, taking a scroll down through his years in the county panel, you find it a small miracle that he made it as far as he did. Marsden was carrying the burden of expectation even as he was carrying a pencil case and with each passing year of his 20s, the summers lengthened and the buzz got louder and the hill got steeper. Just as Joe Kernan has said he probably would have walked had they done the two-in-a-row in 2003, so Marsden was keeping an eye on the odometer by that stage too.

"I was feeling it for probably a couple of seasons before the end of 2004. The downside of the success we were having was that you had no respite at all. It was all go. We won the All Ireland in 2002 and, sure, you couldn't walk away after that.

Then we got beat in the final in 2003 and when you're beaten in the final, you kind of have to say to yourself that you'll give it one last go the following year. I never said anything to anybody but that was the way I was looking at it."

If the treadmill was what pushed him, the relegation of his club Clan na Gael to intermediate football gave a bit of a pull as well. Through one thing and another . . . well, one thing really . . . he'd neglected it.

It wasn't that he was a deadbeat dad, for his intentions were always good and the love was always there. It was just that for long periods, he had another family that needed him.

"When you're playing county football, you're playing county football and you just can't give the time to the club that you should or want to. I know they're trying to put structures in place now to help out the club players and stop county managers having the full say over where the players go and when they can and can't play, but for a number of years there, the reality of it was that it was definitely a case of one or the other. As far as the club went, you turned up for championship matches and then maybe the odd league game but that was about the height of it.

"I found that hard, you know? In terms of generating team spirit, getting involved, knowing what was going on with different lads in the club, it was just about impossible.

And as well as that, the standard of preparation and everything else at club level has gone through the roof in the last few years. With the best will in the world, you can't give your all to both club and county."

So upon retirement, he and Barry O'Hagan took over the running of the Clan senior team and decided to see how far they could take them. With oh-so predictable timing, though, his role as playercoach was cut short within a week of giving up the county scene when he broke his ankle.

A couple of months later, three games into his return, he did a cruciate ligament, ruling him out for the best part of a year. So as it happened, between August 2004 and April 2006, he only played a handful of the club games he was partly retiring from county football to make room for.

Some retirement.

Still, it wasn't wasted time.

Far from it. The schooling he and O'Hagan had received over the years with Armagh went to good use and the Lurgan club were promoted straight back up to the senior grade at their first attempt. By the time Marsden was able to tog out again, they were motoring along nicely, making shapes at a strong run in the league. By the end of last year, they'd made it to Crossmaglen Day . . . otherwise known as the Armagh county final . . . and Marsden was the county's Club Player Of The Year.

That was last December and it inevitably led to talk of a comeback. Most folk assumed that after being on board for so long, Marsden was still effectively a non-playing member of the panel, someone who still palled about with his old comrades, maybe played the odd round of golf with them. Not true at all.

"Funny, you always think when you're playing with the guys that you'll continue to meet up with them on a regular basis, but that just isn't the case. It becomes a clean break whether you mean it to or not. It's another indication of how much of the time of a county footballer is taken up with the county. Even though I'd been there for 12 years, it still came as a bit of a shock to me. And I must say, that's what I missed more than anything . . . the interaction with the lads.

I went to a few of the matches and texted a few of them the odd time but you do definitely become detached from it all."

Not forever, though. Kernan made the call in February.

Ronan Clarke and Brian Mallon had picked up long-term injuries and Marsden's was the page in the phonebook he went flipping for. He took about a month to think about it and spent most of that time reflecting on how much he'd hated the time off with the ankle and the cruciate and what little point there was in dying wondering. So he decided to dip a toe. The water was just as cold as he remembered.

"Preparation has gone up another notch in the time I was away. I came back at the end of February and I was a bit off the pace to begin with. I came on in a league game against Derry in Crossmaglen and I probably wasn't ready for it at all. I had it in my head that I'd probably get 10 or 15 minutes but we had an injury in the first half and I was thrown into it. It definitely took me a while to get to the pitch of it.

"I'm looking forward to it.

Joe has injuries to worry about so I'm delighted to be able to offer him something and help him out. It's not going to be easy, but." Wouldn't be Armagh if it was.