You can almost see the wheels turning in his head as Joe Kernan relives it all as if it were yesterday. Play by play. Blow by blow.
It’s as if a big screen has rolled down in front of his eyes and he’s watching it all over again, mesmerised.
Or, in some little corner in the back of his brain, he has it running on a loop. Why not?
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And it’s beautiful. So beautiful. As clear as day. Even now, two decades on.
Sitting in the front room of his home on the Newry Road in the heart of Crossmaglen, teleported back to a time when he patrolled the Croke Park sidelines, head to toe in black gear, his sides - orange or black and amber - always a force to be reckoned with.
“Benny Tierney won a ball and early in the year he would have kicked to the corner backs,” begins Kernan.
“We got that out of his head. He kicked it long and hit the wing.
“Barry O’Hagan won it, gave it to Aidan O’Rourke and Aidan hit the pass of the Championship.
“A diagonal ball to the left of the D and Stevie (McDonnell) on the outside caught it and just turned on the left foot.
“Stevie’s hands that year. Stevie came from being a poacher at the start of the year, running in behind looking a handy ball to coming out and catching ball.
“He was a lethal finisher. He turned from a great poacher into a Player of the Year the following year.
“He has a pair of hands like vice grips. For his All-Ireland winning point he never even looked.
“I can see that.”
And with that Kernan is fully back in the room again.
McDonnell’s point would prove to be the winner in Armagh’s first - and only - All-Ireland triumph to date.
There would be no more scores for the last 12 minutes of that 2002 All-Ireland final, as Armagh defended a one point lead like no other team in the history of the game could.
Kerry couldn’t find the equaliser.
Then the eruption.
It’s a mini one, and very polite, as Joe’s grandson, James - son of Aaron - enters the living room with a stand he’s building for his football cards.
He has a theme, ‘fire versus water.’ He toyed with the idea of a green lightning strike before dispensing with it.
The wheels are turning there too. At a rate of knots.
“This man is going to be an engineer,” says Joe. “He has a great eye for putting things together. Empty a lorry load of stuff and he’ll build a city.
“It’s dangerous going to the shop. You have to get the doe out for soccer cards.”
James’ younger brother Joe lands then, looking for toast.
Kernan’s home is a hive of activity.
The office of the family business is literally the front half of the Kernan home, with two of Joe’s sons - Stephen and Aaron - working out of it.
‘Big Joe.’ Meath had one. Dublin had one. Sheridan and McNally.
But Armagh’s was the original and outstandingly successful at it, with the pain that defined his playing career with Armagh replaced by four All-Ireland titles as a manager - three with Crossmaglen and one with his county.
There are stories and there are stories.
Kernan was on the Croke Park tour a few years back.
The tour guide pointed out a broken tile in a dressing room where Kernan apparently hopped his 1977 runner’s up plaque off the wall at half-time in the 2002 All-Ireland final.
He laughs at the thought of it: “There was a bigger hole in the tiles. Somebody obviously hit it with a hurley or something to make the story look better.
“It’s mentioned. This is where Joe Kernan threw the plaque off the wall and there’s where Brian Cody broke the hurley off the table.
“Myself and Eamon Mackle (Armagh backroom team member) were talking before the final. ‘I need to do something.’
“Says I, ‘I have something that I don’t like. It’s the plaque.’
“I said to Eamon, ‘I’ll use that.’
“It was a bit of timber. There was a bit of silver plate on the front of it. Over the years, the plate fell off it. You could see a shadow on it.
“Eamon says, ‘I have an All-Ireland winners’ medal.’
‘This is ideal. Set the two things together. I don’t want you to have that. I want you to have this.’
Mackle had bought the medal at an auction. It belonged to one of Wexford footballers from their four in a row side (1915-18).
“Nobody knew what we were doing,” says Kernan. “We just kept it to ourselves because we wanted to hit the spot, if we needed it.
“We walked in at half-time and we did need it.”
First they checked for injuries, as they always did. Then they had a chat as a management team, while the players relaxed for a few minutes.
Then they talked about what they thought they needed to do in the second half.
“ ‘Geezer’ (Kieran McGeeney) or Paul McGrane would then say something,” recalls Kernan.
“I said, ‘Boys, just before you go out, I want to show you something. I have had something in my house and every time I look at it I feel myself like I’m a loser. Every time I look at it, I feel sick.’
“I showed it to them and hopped it off the wall in towards the shower.
“I went around every player.
“There was a silence in the room that was deafening. Did it refocus? I don’t know. Did it work? I don’t know.
“But we went out and we took the game.”
Armagh turned a foreboding four point half-time deficit into a glorious one point triumph on the biggest day in the county’s history.
Kernan had learned a world of invaluable lessons from the big days with Crossmaglen and he was always looking for an edge - if it was required.
For the semi-final encounter with Dublin, he also had a plan for half-time.
“I often wondered about teams ,” he muses, despite his continual success at gauging the mood and setting the right temperature over the years.
“You can rev teams up but sometimes you just need to cool them down and get them refocused.
“I had a plan for the semi-final and final.
“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 All-Ireland final.
“In years to come I learned to appreciate the jersey more so 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 me, 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 I think 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 semi-final, 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.
“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.”
They all have a jersey and a medal now, not a plaque.
Current Armagh manager Kieran McGeeney arranged a get together in Lurgan last Saturday night to mark the 20th anniversary of what remains the county’s only All-Ireland senior victory.
“I said to the boys the other night, the greatest enjoyment you can get as a manager is watching your players celebrate after winning, achieving their goals and playing to their full potential,” recounts 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.
“Things follow you to your death.
“The rest of your life changes to a certain extent.
“Now naturally we would have loved to have won more but I always think it’s very important to win the first one.
“The team that wins the first one, that is something special. That cannot be repeated.
“You can win more All-Irelands but you can’t win the first one again.”
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