An hour or so after he became the first Armagh man to lift Sam Maguire, the captain stood in a dressing room, stuck for words to capture the enormity of what had just happened. It was, he supposed, about people, people who had helped him and his teammates become who they were. Mentors like Charlie Grant and Joe McNulty back home in Mullaghbawn, people like Pillar Caffrey and Peter McDonald, his friends in Na Fianna. And above all, old teammates like Neil Smyth, Kieran McGurk and John Rafferty. The three of them, he said, were "fellas who show you wee things along the way".

Physically, they weren't out on that field or in that dressing room, but "a wee piece of them, " reckoned McGeeney, "was playing today in every one of us."

Rafferty wasn't there in that goal of Oisin's, nor any of those points Ronan Clarke scored straight in Seamus Moynihan's face. But that block McGeeney made on Dara O Cinneide which kick-started that final comeback, there might have been a wee piece of him in that alright. "Sean O'Neill used to say there are two types of footballers: there are soldiers and artists and every successful team must have both. I was no artist. I know that. I'd just go and get the ball to the people who could play. But if on a cold day in the mud and the shit down in Wicklow you needed to win a breaking ball around midfield, I would do that. I have the scrapes to show it."

He had the same approach off the field; a decade before Joe Kernan ever tapped into that famous 'Any Given Sunday' scene, Rafferty was arguably Armagh's first inchfighter. He remembers the morning of one championship match in the mid-90s when the team were sitting down for breakfast. Just as everyone else was about to tuck into their fry, Rafferty asked if he could have some Weetabix and a few bananas instead.

At the time most of his teammates laughed at him. A few years later they were all imitating him. That breakfast that morning had been one of those wee things along the way.

Rafferty eventually got some hardware to show for his hard work. On 1 August 1999, his good friend Jarlath Burns, the vice-principal of St Paul's Bessbrook where Rafferty now teaches PE, became the first Armagh man in 17 years to raise the AngloCelt Cup. It was possibly the best day of Rafferty's career.

It was also one of the saddest.

That day was his last game for Armagh. A few weeks later manager Brian McAlinden called him aside and told him straight out. He wasn't good enough to start in an All Ireland semi-final.

"It was crushing. For 12 years I had slept, drank and ate Armagh football; it was my whole life. But Brian McAlinden was always very fair to me and very straight to me. He just told me that I couldn't cut the mustard when it came to playing outside Ulster. Now when you're 32 and you've spent your whole career trying to get out of Ulster and you're then told you don't have what it takes once you do get out of Ulster, it's very disappointing. But look, nobody died. Only for Brian McAlinden, I wouldn't have my Ulster medal. We'd still be very close; I'd regularly ring him for advice. Ultimately he was right and I accepted the reasons at the time. I walked away from it all after the Meath game knowing I couldn't have given anymore emotionally to the county. And I can always say I went out on a high because really, my county career finished the day of that Ulster final in '99."

Now, all these years later, he finally gets his All Ireland semi-final. It's been a long way back but then St Gall's and himself go a long way back.

When he fell in with them back when he was a student in St Mary's College, he fell in love with them just as quickly, to the point he got a transfer from his own club Poyntzpass. And for 10 years with Gall's, he played, won and above all, learned. He couldn't help but learn from coaches like Charlie Sweeney, Frank Dawson and Culbert.

"Up to then I'd have been a bit from that rural school that you drive it up into the sky and show how big a man you are by horsing around. Gall's showed me it can be a thinking man's game."

At the turn of the decade Rafferty joined back up with Poyntzpass, who have long forgiven him now and whom he still plays a bit of ball with.

He also helped Cathal O'Rourke and Dromintee to their first county final and then helped Castleblaney to the Monaghan county championship before Gall's decided they could learn something from him after Culbert took up the Antrim gig. And that was that. Even artists have to be soldiers.

"We all knew the boys weren't far away; the Ballinderry lads would often have said St Gall's were the best team they played on the way to the 2002 All Ireland.

But we identified that maybe some of our boys had to be willing to get hurt to win possession before they could then show their skills. There are occasions in our game where you must be willing to get hurt. We addressed it head on. We were seen as a lovely football team but not able to cut the mustard when the ball was there to be picked up and there was feet flying. So we identified a few boys in the club who could win that kind of ball and other boys modelled themselves on them."

It helped them to an Ulster title. Now Rafferty wants to win an All Ireland. Nothing has been overlooked. He admits he's become a DVD junkie and knows every kick and hand-pass of Nemo's Munster final win over St Senan's by heart. The week before last he phoned his old mentor, Mayo coach John Morrison, looking for a copy of Mayo's league win in Tralee. A baffled Morrison quipped was it because he wanted to see how football should be played.

It wasn't. It was because Rafferty wanted to see how Thomas Quigley from Wexford refereed.

It's the way all Armagh footballers now think. It's how one Armagh footballer has been thinking for a long, long time.