The hurt gave Armagh heart
refocused.
“I played in an All-Ireland final (1977). I was marking Brian Mullins. I get on well with Brian. At the final whistle Brian said, ‘I want your jersey’.
“I said, ‘No, I want to hold onto it.’
“I didn’t know the importance of what I was thinking then as a young player, but I wanted my Armagh jersey that I played in, in an AllIreland final.
“In years to come I learned to appreciate the jersey more than I did at the time.
“I am a great man for oul westerns, cowboys, and to me you give your jersey and you are giving your scalp to somebody.
“For somebody to wear my jersey down in Kerry training or Dublin training, he is wearing my scalp. He beat me and I don’t like that.
“Whereas if you have the jersey, some child in your own family, some sick child in hospital, they would appreciate your jersey.
“An Armagh person would appreciate that jersey far more, and it’s the same with every county.
“To me, giving your jersey away was an insult to the jersey.
“When we got to the semifinal, and things weren’t going too well, I had a plan that I’d show the boys the jersey, because they didn’t have what I had, and I wanted every one of them to have what I had: an All-Ireland final jersey.
“At that time we weren’t going there.”
The idea was to reset the players, refocus them.
Fear
“Not kicking doors and shouting and roaring,” he says.
“Maybe if it was a wee bit of fear that was there, a simple thing, ‘I want that jersey’.
“And you are going out with a calm and driven mind and the ability to do it.
“We won the semi-final and they were going to have their All-Ireland final jersey then.” (below)
Armagh manager Kieran McGeeney arranged a get together in Lurgan last Saturday night to mark the 20th anniversary of that victory.
“I said to the boys the other night, the greatest enjoyment you can get as a manager is watching your players celebrate winning, achieving their goals and playing to their potential,” says Kernan.
“And their dreams have come true.
“I said to one of the players, ‘I hope we live a long time,’ but I was trying to say even in death this will still be mentioned that you were part of the first Armagh team to win an All-Ireland.
“The rest of your life changes to a certain extent.
“The team that wins the first one, that is something special. That cannot be repeated.”
SAM GOES NORTH: Manager Joe Kernan kisses the Sam Maguire at Armagh’s homecoming in 2002, (below) former Derrry manager Eamon Coleman
THE hurt was still there, and that was important for Joe Kernan.
His Armagh players needed it all to traverse the route laid out before them and reach the pinnacle.
Twenty-years on from the Orchard’s sole All-Ireland win, which puts them in a two-county club with Derry, Kernan says: “Nobody can say we didn’t deserve it.
“We beat Tyrone. We beat Donegal. We beat Dublin. We beat Kerry. So we beat all the big teams.
“The hurt from the two or three previous years. The boys learned.
“To me that was the most important thing. Even though they were on the road for six or seven years they still had that hurt.
“There was a steel about them. One thing we lacked was a wee bit of composure at times.”
The other thing they lacked, according to Kernan, was a little bit of luck.
It was his first year in a post he would occupy for six seasons, landing four Ulster titles.
“The two Brians (McAlinden and Canavan), in fairness, did a great job in bringing them to three Ulsters and were unlucky in the three years. The luck we had, they didn’t have.
“They had the Kerry game (2000) won and lost it. The Galway match, we arrived late and got off to a bad start. A block won it.
“One kick. One mistake is costly. We didn’t play badly. Those things went against you.
“You are watching and hoping and praying that we can win one and it’s just pulled away from you at the death.
“That stigma was there. I used to say, ‘Boys, if you make a mistake, put it to bed. It’s gone’.
“Get on and do the exact same again. If you are ever in any doubt look at those signs.
“Guinness used to have signs in Croke Park with ‘Believe’ on them.
“‘I have made a mistake: do I go for the next ball or do I play safe?’
“You can’t play safe and win All-Ireland titles.
“Are they driven? Have they got ability? Never in doubt. Is there a weight on their shoulders? Maybe.
“How do we get that off them? Sports psychology was good at that and we tried to help.”
Kernan called on bosses who had won All-Irelands.
Mistakes
Seán Boylan told him to “make the mistakes in their full back line.”
He spoke to Billy Morgan. He asked Eamon Coleman how he might know his players were up for it. “Eamon says, ‘They are ‘ateing’ grass.’
“I said, ‘What do you mean, ‘ateing grass’?’
“He says, ‘When your man is knocked down once and gets up, and he’s knocked down twice and gets up: if he gets knocked down the third time and gets up the man knocking him down is in trouble and you know your man’s up for it.’
“When somebody is knocked down once or twice and they don’t get up, they say ‘this is not our day’.
“It’s the boys that had the fire in the belly and were up for it. It doesn’t matter how many times you are knocked down, you get up.”