Ulster SFC Interview with Joe Kernan:Not detail is overlooked, no defeat forgotten, no hurt left untapped in the Armagh manager's pursuit of excellence, writes Tom Humphries

A busy time in Joe Kernan's house and office, both of which sit locked together on Newry Street, just down from the broad square in the centre of Crossmaglen. Go up the hill and cross the square diagonally and you'll see the grey military sheeting behind which you'll find the greatest story in modern GAA lore: Crossmaglen Rangers GAA club, champions of Armagh for the last 11 seasons and still a work in progress.

Joe Kernan, the beating heart of football in this place, sits down in his front room and explains that his front room is so spacious because, well, it used to be a saloon bar. Nobody came though. So he sold the licence and not long afterwards, of course, Crossmaglen asked would he manage the senior team and the club started the run which has filled every pub in the town on more nights than anyone can count. He throws his head back and laughs.

This is his town. He grew up a little bit outside Crossmaglen, remembers well when half the houses didn't exist and the place was just fields. There was a time when he thought to leave for Australia. But he stayed for football. And he made sure football never made him regret the decision.

He is a winner who nourished himself on losing. He recalls a McRory Cup defeat in his final year in school, the 1977 All-Ireland final, his first year as manager with Crossmaglen when they lost to Errigal Ciarán and sat and cried in the dressingroom. He told the boys wherever they were on the 17th of March to make a point of sitting and watching the club final and to feel the pain of not being there.

Feel it and remember it. Kernan feels the pain of those defeats still and something of that pain is in the rage to win which every team he touches seems to possess. As a player he trained on his own every Monday night when training on your own was deemed an act of madness. He had the town half scared to go out on the street when he'd begin his weekly search for some victim to keep him company on his Monday sessions.

Out in the office his thriving estate agency is humming and buzzing. His eldest son, Stephen (the four boys are all footballers), is taking and making calls from here, there and everywhere. Brian Mallon, footballer and financial advisor, sits in another chair. People come and go with enquiries and best wishes for success on Sunday.

Another summer season. Joe's achievement, his monumental achievement, has been to preside over the greatest era in the history of both his club and his county. This little town of just 2,000 people, a town which for so long was preoccupied with political resistance, has channelled all of its spare energy into football. The stripes of Crossmaglen are synonymous with football success. The town is synonymous with Armagh football.

You could spend an hour with Joe Kernan and not see a glimpse of the man who produced the most resilient sides football has seen in recent decades. The happy, weathered face laughs easily and Kernan tells stories against himself far more easily than he tootles his own trumpet.

Little scattered clues though. Ask him to name the great managers who have influenced him and he says immediately, 'Seán Boylan'. Top of the list.

"You couldn't see it with Seán. Such a genial man. You just knew that in the dressingroom there was a different man. And to last for 21 years. That is amazing."

It is moot whether Joe Kernan will linger beyond this year as Armagh manager and the broad symbol of the modern game's renewed health. He prefers to leave it moot too. He speaks about maybe finishing up and how he will talk to the county board at the end of the year. He speaks of what he sees as the future of the Armagh side in terms of continuity and of not breaking the chain. One minute you think he is saying goodbye. The next minute it seems utterly inconceivable that an Armagh defeat in Ballybofey tomorrow could mean his last ever Ulster championship game.

Once many years ago when Joe was a player and Armagh were going well, in that way that Armagh people used to count as going well anyway, Joe suggested to the county board that perhaps it came down to belief and perhaps if the county board got an All-Ireland medal winner in from some other county to talk to the boys about the gap between Armagh and the boys who climbed podiums in Croke Park, perhaps they would understand better how to close the chasm. Nothing happened.

Joe felt that for a month or two he got funny looks from the boys in blazers.

The thought remained with him though, and when he was in charge of Crossmaglen from the mid-90s onward he made it a habit to expose his players to the thoughts of great winners. Colm O'Rourke came, Micko came, and one night Seán Boylan came.

Boylan spoke for a little while and then got a match going. Nobody had ever seen such hitting and intensity, everyone trying to prove himself in the presence of the visiting royal. Joe watched and winced like a parent who feels that on the tip of his tongue is the sentence: all fun and games till somebody loses an eye.

Finally it happened. Cathal Short went over. Injury. Bang. Told you so. The players stopped. Joe went over to Cathal. Boylan said to the players to drag Cathal from the pitch and sit him down behind the goalposts. Boylan told the players to head down to the far end of the field. Everyone headed off. Joe dawdled a minute and followed too with a backward glance to his injured player.

"My concern was for Cathal but I didn't want to miss what Seán was saying. We were heading down the field, the players jogging ahead, and Seán nodded back towards Cathal. He said, 'he's no good to you now. You have to forget about him. He can lick his wounds or the physio can fix him. You have to get on with managing.' "

Getting on with managing. When Crossmaglen played Na Fianna in the All-Ireland club final seven years ago, at one point Cross had three players down injured. One, Jim McConville, needed replacing.

"Before that anyone would have said 'what would you do?' It's simple. Somebody treats them. Put on a sub. Keep going. We scored three points in that period."

Oh, Cathal Short was man of the match.

Getting on with managing is the simplest advice to give, the hardest to execute. Joe is famously a good man to delegate and just as famously a good man to move swiftly if anyone he has delegated to forms a barrier between Joe and his team.

"When I see a sports psychologist holding a player's hand or putting his arm around a player and the two of them are something separate from the team - ah, you can't be having that."

Getting on with managing.

What is remarkable about the revolutions Kernan has ignited is their sustainability. Crossmaglen kept winning when he moved on to county level. Last year they were minor and under-21 champions. The ethos in the town is the pursuit of excellence.

The Kernan boys have built a gym at the back of the house. Joe doesn't push the lads but he noticed Aaron in there on the morning after Cross won this year's All-Ireland championship.

Young players feed through and are nourished by the monastic dedication of those ahead of them and around them. The club recycles itself.

"And 11 years," laughs Joe, "nobody wants to be playing on the team that loses after that. That gets fellas working."

And Armagh, though it is five years since their All-Ireland win, are a sustainable commodity too. The team which won in 2002 had been on the road for quite some time. Nineteen of that panel have been replaced. Armagh won an under-21 All-Ireland in 2004, an Ulster title at the same level last year. The players are feeding through steadily.

Kernan's teams have reimagined what the brand leaders in Gaelic football should look like and feel like and even sound like. Armagh are muscular, zealous, articulate and confident in their articulation. They have broken the old GAA mould whereby teams reflexively talked themselves down. The confidence they feel is nothing shameful. The team ethic is nothing secret. Armagh are open about what they do and how they do it.

If you want to flatter them through imitation, as many have done, just try it.

More players than ever now do their weights work on their own. It's a big ask of any amateur. Armagh ask more though. When they go to La Manga or wherever for a week of warm-weather training they don't follow the pattern of other sides by allowing one night in the week for letting the hair down or bonding through alcohol.

"Why would you?" asks Joe. "What is the point of going away if you're going to do that and then spend the next day recovering? I like my wine. When we go away though I don't touch a drop. The team don't. None of the backroom boys do either.

"There's a thing within the team that if somebody is messing somebody else will take them aside and ask why are they ruining it for everyone else. That's how it has to be. If a few fellas don't want it enough the chain of commitment gets broken for everyone."

Imitate them if you want to. Beef up. Copy their patterns and style. Do what they do. Do you have the discipline though to close the dressingroom door for training every night on the week of a match and say no more jerseys to be signed? Sorry. Doesn't matter if the Child of Prague comes along with a jersey for his sick brother. If it's after the cut-off point the Child of Prague won't be having the jersey signed. No more signing. When the team are on run-in to a game nothing gets in the way.

Copy them. But do you have a Joe Kernan with thumbs and fingers all over the blueprint? Do you have a leader with the nimbleness to keep changing, a leader who develops as his squad need him to?

"You have to change. The way you do things, the things you say, your approach. Players change. The team changes. That's a challenge to recognise in yourself at the beginning of every year, that something new is needed of you, something more."

He works hard on the things he says to players, always looking for the precise words to fit the occasion. All week, this week, he has carried notebooks around, scribbling down thoughts, and bits and pieces he has scavenged magpie-like from a range or sources. On Friday night he'll have let all the words and thoughts percolate into something he wants to say. That will be the theme for the weekend. And on Sunday there will be more of it. More of the theme.

He says he is not a great reader but is open. He'll listen to anyone and if somebody recommends he read something he'll go through a whole book and find the two lines worth using.

His motivational abilities are legendary, from throwing away his 1977 All-Ireland loser's medal to using Al Pacino's Any given Sunday speech on the Armagh team bus. He plundered Vince Lombardi years ago and his search for freshness has brought his mind to rest on practically every code there is. He especially appreciates rugby and the team spirit the game is built on. Dave Alred and Shaun Edwards have spoken to Kernan's players about the art of winning. He changes and he tries to remain out front.

"I saw something on telly there recently where some Premiership team were talking about how they'd started using the Pacino speech. I thought to myself, ah, you're five years out of date, boys."

It's easy to look at Armagh and say dismissively it is five years since they won an All-Ireland. Easy to forget that back, say, in 2000 most of us would have felt the Armagh team of that time would never win an All-Ireland at all. The rebuilding which has gone on has taken place in an environment no team would call recessional. Ulster titles have continued to flow.

It is true, as Joe points out, that Armagh have lost a little of something else they took from Meath - that power to be indomitable in the closing minutes of a game.

And that's the challenge now. Possibly the final one. Armagh have handled success better possibly than just about any breakthrough county you care to recall. They have the structures. They have the young faces. Replicating that unyieldingness in a new team is the final challenge.

"We just have to put ourselves in those situations, in training especially, doing the right things under pressure all the way to the end. We have to learn that."

And when it has been done Kernan will have achieved what the other greats have achieved: Boylan, Heffernan, et al. He will have dismantled and rebuilt his own side.

Today he goes to Ballybofey. On the bus through the town he'll say to himself, "What am I still doing this for?" But when the boys hit the field and the place begins to rock he'll feel completely at home again.

The last waltz? Who knows.