Armagh wake up this morning blinking against the glare of a new era. It's their time. It's their world. The rest of us just live in it.

They came to Croke Park this weekend timidly fancied in some quarters, dismissed in most others. By half time they had squandered the benefits of a good wind and a cheap penalty. We wondered were they lingering in the dressing-room so long because they were looking for a pulse. Nothing but the same old story, we said. Pity the oul Dubs aren't here, we said. Then Armagh came out and told us that everything we knew about football was wrong.

This was the All-Ireland that proved that the world ain't flat, even if teams drop off the end of it sometimes. This proved that what goes around comes around again. Armagh have been waiting for Kerry, waiting patiently. They got roughed up in a final in 1953 and got pickpocketed in a semi-final in 1990. Yesterday they gave Kerry a four-point lead at half time, gave them the wind, gave them every chance. And they won. They out-played and they out-thought Kerry.

It's not flat. It isn't. You can miss a penalty in an All-Ireland final against Kerry and still win. You can hold a great Kerry forward line to a point from play in the second half of an All-Ireland final. You can hold them scoreless entirely for the final 15 minutes. These are things we never knew before yesterday.

They say the first time is the best time and if Armagh go on to win a hatful of All-Ireland titles none will be better than this. It was one of the great finals. The football ran pure for long stretches and even when it didn't the play was thoughtful and crisp. More than any other side in recent memory, Armagh's win was built on cerebration. Everybody in football works hard, everybody in football has talent, few teams could have thought their way out of the corner they were in at about 10 past four yesterday.

It took conviction and it took something more visceral, a wild hunger born out of defeat and bad times. At half time Joe Kernan, who lost a famous final here 25 years ago, fished into his kitbag and took out the bauble he'd been given for being on the losing side that day. He fired it against the wall of the dressing-room and told his team that it wasn't worth two balls of glue. They sat up.

Armagh had the players when it was white-knuckle time. OisíMcConville missed a penalty, but stepped up and hit a tough 45 which was just as invigorating. Tony McEntee came in from the bench like a transfusion of life. The full-forward line scored three points each from play.

And they had Kieran McGeeney.

The defining moment perhaps came 12 minutes from the end and involved the two pedigree players on the pitch. Seamus Moynihan swept out of the Kerry goalmouth and whipped a ball from under the nose of Ronan Clarke. He had a quick look up and played a 50-yard hoof downfield. It fell straight into Kieran McGeeney's hands and almost in the same movement he planted it back to the vicinity it had come from, only this time straight to the paws of Clarke.

Clarke levelled the scores for the first time since the 15th minute.

All through the remarkable second half of yesterday's final the growing influence of McGeeney seemed likely to be the deciding factor between the two sides. Benny Tierney, the Armagh goalkeeper, grew up a little ahead of McGeeney in Mullabawn, but all these years later he's still amazed by the neighbour's child.

"Kieran McGeeney doesn't talk," said Tierney, "he does. He said at half time that he wasn't producing. That he could talk the talk but he wasn't walking the walk. It started with him. He trains harder, he drives more miles. He's just a leader. We follow him."

McGeeney himself said over and over again that he hadn't the words to describe yesterday. He said it from the Hogan Stand as he grasped the great gleaming canister in his hand. He said it again in the tunnel outside the dressing-rooms as the media swamped him and he said it quietly in his own dressing-room, leaning thoughtfully with his back to the wall.

His own renaissance had prompted that of the team around him. There is no better mark of leadership or influence. He conceded at least that a renaissance was needed at half time.

"Kerry moved the ball so quick I knew they were going to move it around me, they weren't going to kick it down my throat. It had to go into their corner forwards. I could have cried about it and said they're not kicking the ball to me, but that usually doesn't happen in Gaelic football. I had to go out and win it myself. I wasn't going to point the finger at other people when I wasn't doing it myself. You have to bury your woes and come out and change."

Again the curious mix of thoughtfulness and feral hunger. McGeeney found a way into the match. Early in the second half he went and claimed two balls he had little right to and pumped huge deliveries down the main causeway to the Kerry goal.

Thirteen years he's been on this road to fulfilment. None of them easy. Each of them making him the player he was yesterday.

"I've never come close to quitting. After Galway last year I felt like it. Days like today don't feel good unless you have days like that. Paul McGrane, myself and Benny, you sacrifice your life. I know people say it's a choice, but after a while it stops being a choice. You have to do it. It's something in your blood. You set out to do. Ten or 11 years ago in the Botanic Inn in Belfast I remember saying that and I was just a year or two on the Armagh team. The people I was talking to just laughed at me. They said I wouldn't win an Ulster. Wee things like that stick in your head."

Yesterday and the shrill of the final whistle was what he lived for. He inverts the dressing-room cliche. There is an I in "team", he says. You have to get yourself right before you can present yourself to the team. More than almost anyone in football, McGeeney has had himself right for years now. This was a journey for a team and a county, but at the heart of it was one man's quest for personal fulfilment. Culture and circumstance and good luck meant that football was the vehicle he chose for the journey.

"To be honest, I'm not trying to belittle Ulster, but I never dreamed of winning an Ulster medal. It's like beating your neighbours, but it doesn't make you the best. Today we proved we are the number one team in Ireland. It's more about proving it to yourself The only way to do that is on a football pitch."

It goes around and all the particles gather themselves and come around again and again. When McGeeney was walking behind the Artane Boys Band yesterday, he did something he doesn't usually do, he looked up into the stands at the fields of swaying orange and his gaze fell upon the face of an old friend and mentor. Charlie Grant.

When McGeeney first started kicking a football in the flatlands of Mullabawn it was Charlie Grant who had charge of the team.

"He introduced me to football. He had a great love for it. He used to say, go out and play Kieran. He never tried to mould us at under-10 and under-12. Amazing how the full circles come. It's men like him and Joe McNulty, Justin and Enda's father who took me at minor, men like Peter McDonald and Pilar Caffrey in Na Fianna, all the people who shape you. It all comes out there today. Other players. Neil Smyth and John Rafferty and Kieran McGurk, fellas who show you wee things along the way. It all comes out on days like today when you throw everything single thing in. A wee piece of all those people was playing today in everyone of us."

Kieran McGeeney started by saying that he wished he had the words to describe the day. He had. On a day when he lacked nothing he had the words, too.