Seán Moran talks to Armagh manager and former player Joe Kernan who is a match away from translating All-Ireland club success with Crossmaglen to a bigger stage with the county team

Two years ago Joe Kernan sat in the stand at Croke Park and waited. The All-Ireland semi-final replay between Armagh and Kerry was about to go into extra-time. As he looked at the teams and their respective managements out on the field he was struck by what Kerry were doing - or not doing.

"Páidí Ó Sé and his boys were just standing there looking at what we were doing. Just staring for a couple of minutes, taking in the changes we were making and having a good look at who was gone. Then they went back to their players. It was that experience, that cuteness."

Next Sunday Kernan is face to face with Páidí Ó Sé and his selectors. Once more Armagh and Kerry meet. Now he's in charge.

A friend of his wife Patricia asked did Joe not feel immense pressure on the sideline as his team grappled on the precipice with Dublin. "Not at all," she replied. "Nothing stresses him. He's born to do it."

In a sense he's the last card the current team have to play. The county came close under the previous management of Brian Canavan and Brian McAlinden, who eventually made way for Big Joe.

Kernan brings a couple of trolleys of baggage to the job of managing the Armagh seniors. "Credentials" might be a more diplomatic word but doesn't quite do justice to the bits and pieces of experience and achievement that he has in tow as the prospect of the county's first All-Ireland shimmers on the horizon.

His story is rooted in Crossmaglen, a town whose image he helped reshape from a symbol of all that was wrong in the Northern conflict to a football stronghold. Instead of automatically associating the local Rangers club with the Kafkaesque harassment of British army requisition and re-requisition, the rest of the country could acknowledge the unparalleled achievement of three All-Ireland club titles in four years.

The team was unusually young and specialised in winning out in tight conclusions. In many ways the recent defeat of Dublin in the All-Ireland semi-final mirrored Crossmaglen's style right down to the late winner and fraught conclusion. Playing well or poorly, the club could win matches with the minimum to spare.

Ballina Stephenites had them dead for most of the 1999 final but still were caught for the customary one-point defeat.

"The Cross way was you played to the final whistle," says Kernan. "When we won our first All-Ireland I'd 11 under-21s on that team. So after a certain while working with them when we'd won our first title in 10 years and then won Ulster after a replay, there was a steel came into these boys at a very, very early age."

Given all the obstacles placed in the way of the club and its membership, the fact that it is still there at all is remarkable. The occupation started back in the early 1970s and encompassed most of Kernan's senior playing career.

"Unfortunately," he says, "like a lot of people here in the North you try to become immune from the situation. So you're running up and down the field and there's these 20 men in uniform with guns walking up and down the side of the field looking at you, maybe laughing at you, and taking the piss.

"We just became immune to it. You had to. And all these young lads who won the three All-Irelands - they have known nothing else; at least I knew there was life before the Troubles. These young lads have been brought up with these things happening from day one. I suppose football was their saviour. We were able to keep them interested in the game and the success added not only to the enjoyment but it certainly saved a lot of people in the area.

"People would have said maybe it would have been better to shut the club down for a few years so that things could settle down. But the people here aren't made of stuff like that. Sometimes that defiance has come through on the field. It probably did make them more resilient. People here kept the club going when it would have been easier to close the gates."

It's three years since the occupation of the club premises came to an end. But the poison still isn't fully drained.

"Not really. I suppose this will be the last place to change. We got our ground back but the people beside the barracks are still fighting to get their gardens back and until there's a total handing-back nobody in the area will be happy. Hopefully that will be sooner rather than later but the soldiers are still out on the streets here and the helicopters are still flying over. Throughout the whole of the North there is a little bit more ease but I suppose whether it's there or not we just carry on.

"A lot of us here are just good Irishmen but at the same time our sport shines through more strongly than wanting to argue our politics down people's throats. I love watching all sports, rugby and soccer, which are enjoyed by both Catholics and Protestants. I think sport solves a lot of problems. For us, our love of our national game has kept us going."

Having managed such feats with the club, his call-up to the county was surely inevitable but there was more to Joe Kernan's background. He had played for Armagh on the last occasion - until this month - that they had reached the All-Ireland final, 25 years ago. And for a few years at the turn of the last decade he had helped his former team-mate, Paddy Moriarty, with the county team.

The 1977 All-Ireland is a more offbeat calling card than the success of Crossmaglen. A good but not exceptional Armagh team ran full tilt into the propellers of Dublin, fresh from the legendary semi-final defeat of Kerry. Kernan was a burly, barrel-chested centrefielder who scored two goals that day and won an All Star.

He remembers the colour at Croke Park as the Armagh supporters at the first all-ticket final made their presence felt. He remembers the thousands that gathered in Crossmaglen to welcome home a team that had given the county only its second All-Ireland day out. But most of all he remembers losing.

"Seán Devlin hit the post just after half-time when we were six points down and Dublin scored a goal at the other end. If truth be told it was probably over before it started because their football was far superior but we didn't feel that at the time and were broken-hearted."

In one of the season's great dressing-room coups de theatre he produced his 1977 jersey at half-time during the Dublin match and told his players he wanted them all to have an All-Ireland jersey in the years ahead. All he can wish them now is better fortune in those jerseys than he enjoyed.

The question was how would he get on in his new role? As manager of Crossmaglen, Kernan needed his players for long stretches and consequently the county management couldn't have them for long stretches.

Would the club experience be useful or inhibiting when it came to dealing with other players? He sits in his office, a large room tucked onto the side of his house. He runs a financial services business and dabbles in a bit of property. Previously he was a sales manager for United Beverages and had a pub in Crossmaglen ("during a quiet time for football," he explains). There on a chair is the jersey. Still bright orange, its 1970s-style number eight - back projected with groovy lines - is wearing away.

His house is lively. He and Patricia have five boys running in and out, playing for the club and giving interviews to visiting television crews. In the case of the youngest, 10-year-old Ross, who has been part of the scenery at training since the start of the season, there are measurements faxed to Louis Copeland so that he will look the part when the officially-dressed panel head for Croke Park next Sunday.

People call to the door on business or perhaps because theyhave heard that the tickets arrived the previous evening.

Joe Kernan may be genial and hospitable but he is also organised and serious. He knows that big expectations accompanied his appointment.

"When I first took over everyone says: 'Ah that's great, Joe's here. Now everything will fit into place'. But it's not as simple as that. I was in Crossmaglen for eight or nine years. For three years we won nothing.

"I've only had Armagh since last October. So to try to get everything you want into a team in that space of time would be impossible. We are delighted with the way we have progressed and in certain matches we have shown flashes of what we can do. I believe there's more in us."

He agrees initial attempts to graft Crossmaglen's style of play onto the county's players were not successful. He was aware of the risk when he started.

"The one worry I had taking over Armagh was teaching old dogs new tricks because a lot of the boys had been playing for five, six, seven, eight years. You worried that a lot of them just mightn't want to face into what I thought was right for them.

"We might have had a hiccup in the league but looking back on that I think that helped us because our backs were really to the wall. There was a lot of things we wanted, like a more professional attitude on and off the field, but the Laois match was one of the turning points for us this year."

The Laois match was a Division Two semi-final that Armagh lost to great gloom and despondency in the county.

"It wasn't planned. People actually thought we planned it that way, that we just wanted to get promotion and prepare for the championship. Losing that day was very disappointing. It happened probably because we in management were still experimenting, giving (Kieran) McGeeney the role of third midfielder and Francie Bellew at centre half."

The experiments in question were pure Crossmaglen. Colm O'Neill, a 6ft 6ins corner forward, used to move out to supplement the club's centrefield. The same trick was tried with Armagh's captain and driving force, centre back Kieran McGeeney, but to no great success. Bellew was Crossmaglen's centre back and displaced McGeeney. Kernan knows that this might have been insensitive but says it was for the best of reasons.

"I had to go in and try what I thought was best. We had our hands up after the Laois match, the players and the management. We had a meeting on the Tuesday night and I said: 'We're going to have to change a few things here. We'll hold our hands up. We tried something that didn't work but the commitment of youse on the field that day wasn't up to scratch either so we'll start again here.'"

The team went to Spain for a bit of a break and some warm weather training. The timing, just after the Laois setback, slightly alarmed Kernan.

"La Manga helped us as well. But going away put more pressure on me as a manager and more pressure on the players. But it worked well. These boys were able to cope with that and they bonded well."

BEATING Dublin must have been satisfying for Joe Kernan 25 years after his All-Ireland disappointment. And despite his experience as manager of a nearly invincible club side he was comfortable with working the underdog angle before the semi-final.

It's the most powerful motivation in Gaelic games: "Everyone's writing yiz off, lads."

Managers crave outsider status and claim it regardless of whether they have earned it. But whereas many of his peers are a little shifty about this approach, Kernan is up front.

A newspaper cutting hangs on his wall - its headline one of the summer's routine paeans to Dublin manager Tommy Lyons. Umm. would you have, eh, found that article particularly useful?

"I had more up there," he says almost absent-mindedly. "You always look for some angle to motivate and if it means someone saying something that you can twist or turn to get the better of somebody so be it. There's no sense in saying that I don't play it. Every county in the country does. At the end of the day it's getting the best out of the players you have. Some need a pat on the back, others need a kick in the arse. Whatever it takes."

In six days he leads his county into its third All-Ireland final. They have fallen roughly every quarter of a century. His cousin Frank Kernan played in the 1953 final, also against Kerry and also fruitless. Three times in the past six years he has sent winning teams out onto Croke Park for All-Ireland finals.

Now he is a match away from doing what he was appointed to do - translate that club success to a bigger stage. It's a tall order. Did he ever feel that Armagh's chance came and went in the 2000 semi-final?

"That was the one wee worry I had. People told me I should have been there two years ago. The only one way I was going to find that out was by giving it a go and I definitely would have gone to my dying grave - and I keep saying this - wondering could it be done.

"I'm glad I took up the challenge, I know my head was on the block, supporters are very fickle - one bad day and you're gone. Whatever reputation you have doesn't be long going down the Swannee, but the thought of helping these boys achieve their goal was far stronger than any pressure that would be put on me."

Pressure? He's made for it.