Tom Humphries talks to Armagh manager Joe Kernan and captain Kieran McGeeney about their eagerness to get back to work after months of celebration.

Nine days ago, on a Thursday night, they stood in front of the mirror and looked themselves in the eye. The jet-lag which a long-haul from San Diego to home lends was still in many legs. There was that greater fatigue gathered from months of squiring the Sam Maguire around the place. So they stood in front of the mirror. They climbed on the scales. They did the blood tests, the bleep tests the whole shebang.

What they saw staring back wasn't great but it wasn't so bad either. Wasn't bad at all in fact. The hunger is still there because the type of hunger you have is defined by the type of person you are and the type of team you are. Armagh's hunger has always been about the path to excellence. This season brings them to a new level in their search for it. That's all.

And Joe Kernan, the serene buddha who leads the way? Don't talk to him about hunger. Don't utter the word. He attended his 45th official celebration dinner on Wednesday night. He was still rubbing his tummy when Friday night and dinner number 46 came around. The team had their own function for the presentation of their All-Ireland medals.

An Armagh team with All-Ireland medals in their pockets. Joe thought of the night last September when 15,000 people were out in Crossmaglen to welcome him and his team home. Funny thing was, it was just a continuation of a journey that had begun 25 years earlier in 1977 when there were 15,000 people out in Cross to welcome home an Armagh team who had been cuffed in Croke Park.

"They were so generous that night and us after getting a battering and we promised we'd be back the next year. We all promised ourselves that. There was a tradition there, a determination."

And so it was done. Done but not yet finished.

Now 46 dinners later, it's time to stand up from the table. They have one or two lingering obligations and then they'll take a long walk. When Joe looks at his team he sees them crying out for that. They need to put away the plumage and take out the gear again. Their ethic makes them long for muddy fields and cold nights. Frozen fingers on mud-caked laces. The brace of a hot shower. Some hard work before their residual fitness ebbs away.

Now, though, before they are as clear-eyed as they would like to be they have this novel National League event in Croke Park. The swaggering Dubs standing still for a moment to applaud them on to the field and then getting ready to scalp them.

The place half full and roaring. It'll tell them some truths they might be able to use.

"It's something to get the goose-pimples going," says Joe. "Maybe it doesn't matter so much who wins, it's a great way to start it. And one thing I know, we don't like losing matches. We're not that sort of team."

They are not. And that is where hope resides, in the character of a side who, it appeared, had already had enough bites of the fruit for which their county is famed. The team who came back and beat all the big franchises last summer.

THERE'S a moment which sums things up for Joe Kernan. It's framed in a picture which he keeps in his house. The shot was taken maybe 90 seconds after the final whistle on All-Ireland day as that great deluge of orange sluiced on to the pitch. The picture is of Joe and Kieran McGeeney. It is an unguarded moment between two reticent men.

"There were tears in his eyes and certainly a few in mine," says Joe. "The look said it all. This is the moment that he waited for and certainly the moment that I waited for. It was just nice to meet Kieran in all that chaos. Ach, more than that. It was important.

"If you know McGeeney or Paul McGrane, they are driven men. They only wanted one thing. They took a lot of hardship along the way when lesser men would have crumbled. They had three years near the top and didn't do it. People said no way can they come back. Weak men don't come back. You have to know those men and the character they bring."

Kernan and McGeeney had first met many years ago, neither realising that they would some day infuse a team with the stuff of winning, the love of excellence, the confidence of doers.

"Joe presented me with a plaque at an underage presentation in Mullaghbawn." says McGeeney. "My Dad is from just outside Cross, owned a garage there, he took me up and Joe signed the back of the plaque for me."

The influence on each other's destiny began then. At first it was just a hero thing. Boy worshipped man. Then it was about Joe Kernan being a man from Cross and Kieran McGeeney being a man from Mullaghbawn, a man who knew that the first step on the path to excellence was beating men from Cross. And then there was recognition of a shared quality.

"There are fellas who you can't define," says McGeeney. "But when you walk into a dressing-room or just meet them you realise they are winners. I see it in the Armagh dressing-room. There's fellas there. And with the Irish panel. You can sense it off a Tohill or a Canavan without saying a word to them, just by looking at them.

"Joe is the exact same. He's always thinking. Even if he's messing around with the lads there's something else going on in there. As well as being a passionate man he's a smart man and a loyal man. He has all the attributes that are needed. To do something for somebody you have to respect them totally. When he asks you to do something all of our boys are willing to do it. He has that extra quality. If you knew what it was you'd bottle it and sell it."

So when it ended last summer, that part of the journey they have both taken it was fitting that they found each other. Ordained even.

"After the final whistle went Tony Mac was the first one into me. Another Cross man. I was on my knees, all the supporters were streaming across and there was just sort of a clean pathway to Joe. The picture of the moment describes it better.

"It sums it up. Maybe it was one of those moments of weakness which nobody likes describing. We just said we'd done it, I thanked him for it. He said a few things too. I remember what he said more than what I said."

And what was that? "Private. If Joe's not telling, I'm not."

THERE have been other moments of course. Schools. Hospitals. The homes of the old and the dying, the magical piece of silverware drawing tears to every eye, every visit affirming what this game "is all about". Kieran McGeeney, in his Dad's home place, visited an old man lying on the cusp of death. The old man cried. Told the player he could die happy now.

That wasn't unusual. The meaning of happiness, the communal nature of the success was in evidence everywhere. At the end, though, it comes back to the team, that tight fist of men drawing itself in again now. Kernan feels it and McGeeney feels it.

"There are so many memories," says Joe. "Personally I had the Sam in my home on New Year's Eve. We had friends and family in and that meant a lot. But the big things were for the team. The All Stars. The All-Irleand night banquet. Two thousand Armagh people seeing Sam Maguire being carried in.

"We'd all watched and wondered, what that would be like, what would the atmosphere be like. Two thousand in a room and 5,000 in a room trying to get in. That and the All Star night, Kieran getting Player of the Year, Ronan (Clarke) getting Young Player. Special nights we all experienced. The homecoming, the crowds all the way down the road."

It's sepia-coloured already. Framed and fading. Snapshots. Kieran McGeeney remembers an evening about two weeks after the win. His mind was on the future already.

"The best moments are personal, I suppose. Diarmuid Marsden's stag night. Not everybody was there, but a lot of Diarmuid's friends, a lot of the players. I was just taking a moment to myself and I looked across and all the boys were standing together and I could see that bond. Just in that moment. So many things can happen between now and when we leave this place, maybe we'll fall out, maybe go our own ways but that bond will always be there. The best moments are like that, personal moments.

They are an extraordinary bunch. They never poured a drink into the well of the great gleaming cup. They haven't gone any place where the cup was filled. Too much respect. Too much delicacy of feeling about it. They have the puritan's zeal.

Tomorrow is about finding that special sober quality in themselves. They need traction to get moving again. Kernan is back and buzzing.

"We're now winners and we're there to be beaten. That's the challenge. We might think we've done the right things but if it was easy we would have won it years ago."

And McGeeney? Found feeding his appetite already, honing himself.

"Winning the All-Ireland was never the be-all and end-all. It proved a point. It's about being the best we can be. The more I read about our win it seems we can't play, we still haven't got any good footballers, we were lucky for eight games. We have more road to travel."

Sounds like the basis for a dressing-room speech in early summer, you say.

"That's if I make my place," he says.

No hint of a smile.