Sean Og O hAilpin and Aaron Kernan had been friends since O hAilpin's International Rules teammate Philip Loughran introduced them at the 2004 GPA awards. O hAilpin had just been honoured as the Hurler of the Year while Kernan was only a fringe player with the Armagh seniors, yet within moments O hAilpin was congratulating Kernan on his All Ireland under-21 success the previous month. The pair would spend most of the next three hours in each other's company; in Kernan, O hAilpin detected a kindred spirit. The morning after that year's All Ireland final, some of the Cork team were on their way from the bar to bed when O hAilpin shot past in his running shorts, on his way out for a run. A few weeks later Kernan trained with his club the afternoon after he'd won that under-21 All-Ireland. Winning for both of them wasn't an event but a lifestyle.

The night in Cork was enjoyable. Kernan had befriended the county's football goalkeeper Alan Quirke on the All-Star trip in Dubai and Alan's sister was Sean Og's girlfriend, so when Kernan and his girlfriend Marianne had a few days off after her exams and his pre-championship training camp, it was a chance to all meet up.

The following morning, at eight o'clock, O hAilpin and Kernan teamed up again, this time in the gym. First they cycled, then lifted some weights and then it was core, a series of exercises to strengthen the muscles around the stomach and groin. Kernan had been a keen advocate of core for over three years. O hAilpin though had been doing it ever since Ger Hartmann introduced him to its merits shortly after his car accident, and so showed Kernan some of Hartmann's more advanced manoeuvres that made them look like gymnasts on acid playing Twister.

It might have been nine in the morning and it might have been his holidays but Aaron Kernan's pursuit of excellence is exhaustive.

He's been friendly with Down's Martin Clarke ever since he rang to wish him well on the eve of the 2005 All Ireland minor final but that contact has been intensified in recent months as Kernan has sought tips on the diet and preparation Aussie Rules' latest phenomenon has been adhering to.

Martin McHugh has observed Kernan's capacity to improve. "When Aaron came along in 2005 and won Young Player of the Year, people still questioned his ability to defend. They can't question it now. The last day against Donegal, the amount of ball he swept up was incredible. The fact he has two feet, the way he's so comfortable on the ball, the way he's built up his body; he's very close to having everything. With [Seamus] Moynihan gone, I'd say he's now the best wing back in football."

For Kernan every setback and every victory has been an opportunity to learn. In McHugh's eyes Kernan was the man of the match in Crossmaglen's latest All Ireland club final replay win, yet Kernan himself was disappointed that two frees he took out of his hands were held up by the wind; since then he's practised hitting them off the ground to get more power and control.

In Ballybofey six weeks ago, Kernan was again deemed the game's outstanding player but the player himself felt he'd contributed to Armagh's downfall.

"There were times where I felt, 'God, I'm a wee bit tired here' and there's no way I should have been tired. The day after I was even more annoyed because I felt there was more I could have done. After their goal, I had a ball out on the wing and tried to hit a 40-yard pass to Geezer [Kieran McGeeney]. There were about 15 players between us. It was too hard a pass to try. All we needed was to hold the ball and get someone in a better position and I kicked it away. But again, it was a learning experience."

Everything is. Kernan grew up in the most football-obsessed household in the most football-obsessed town in Armagh but that held little weight in his late teens. In his last year at minor, he was only a sub with the county.

The following year he still couldn't get a game with Crossmaglen while his brother Stephen and Michael McNamee and John Murtagh could. Ronan Clarke, his old underage adversary from Pearse Ogs, had broken onto the county team and won an All Ireland.

"I was frustrated because I thought I should have been playing but maybe if I had got my chance then I wouldn't have been as determined to make it. If things had been handed more easily to me, if people could say, 'Oh, he's Joe Kernan's son, he has to play', then maybe I'd have started to think, 'Yeah, I'm always going to get on.' It just got to the stage where I'd stay behind after training every night and practise my shooting or passing or whatever."

The following May Kernan made his championship debut with Cross. That November he was their player of the year and called up to the county senior panel. Now he's one of the mainstays of that panel. This past two seasons Armagh have needed last-minute scores from Stevie McDonnell to avoid relegation but in each of those games it was Kernan who kicked the point previous to McDonnell's interventions.

His involvement in this year's face-off against Westmeath was particularly telling.

The previous Sunday Kernan had won an All Ireland club title. It was everything he had ever dreamed about, sharing the moment with his brothers and seeing old Cross heroes like Gary McShane and Joe Fitzpatrick run onto the field to hug him seven years after he'd sprinted onto Croke Park as a kid to embrace them, yet the following morning Kernan was working out in the room his father converted into a gym over the winter.

That night he had a couple of drinks but on the Tuesday he was back training with Armagh.

"It was no big deal. To be honest, I couldn't wait. I didn't want to come back playing Division Three football next year and it wouldn't be right to drink my head off and expect to play for Armagh. When you come onto a team with leaders like McGeeney and [Paul] McGrane and Enda [McNulty], you know no other way."

He cannot say enough about those men.

About their legacy ("We're allowed to play in Croke Park now; there's no curse saying Armagh can't win there, that Armagh can't win All Irelands"), their dedication, their knowledge of the game. When the team went away to Dublin for a recent training camp, Kernan made a point of sharing the same car as McNulty to pick up some more nuggets on how to tackle.

McGeeney is the same, always there to show him how to get the hand in and how to get it quickly out to stop forwards grabbing onto it and win the easy free. They're willing to take advice too. At least on the training ground. On match day? "You do as Kieran tells you really. That's basically it."

Last November Kernan broke his arm when he was hit by a late challenge as he was kicking the ball. It ruled him out of the rest of Crossmaglen's Ulster club campaign and he couldn't work for a few weeks in the estate agency firm he's taken over from his father.

He couldn't drive to viewings, couldn't type.

Yet the Wednesday after breaking that arm, he was in the family gym, doing some core.

Every day he works out.

"It's no big deal, " he shrugs. "I enjoy it, like.

You nearly have it in your head that you're a professional so doing something about it keeps you happy."

Cross and Armagh might mean he plays all-year round but he maintains people who truly love the game don't get burned out. "If you take care of yourself, you can play most of the year. I feel better now than I did before the club final or the Donegal game. People talk about all the games we played in 2005, that our run in league and Ulster cost us the All Ireland, but how many games had we from May to September? Something like 10.

In Aussie Rules they play 22 games in 22 weeks."

He hopes to be playing week in, week out himself now. He's apprehensive about today, the fact it's Derry ("They kicked the shit clean out of us in the league this past two years") and Paddy Bradley ("An unreal footballer"), but if Armagh survive Clones, he thinks they can go on a run that will take them all the way to September. In Ballybofey they learned that they must keep playing aggressively to the final whistle, that Paul McGrane doesn't just roar "Next score" for the sake of it, that they must drive on like Kilkenny and the All Blacks when they have their opponents by the throat, but above all, they learned they still have it.

"Anyone who says we weren't pushed about winning another Ulster wasn't in our dressing room after the game. It was the first time a few of us had ever lost in Ulster and we were gutted. But Joe came in and said, 'Boys, we'll be okay. You played well.' Even out on the field, Brendan Devenney said to me, 'The better team got beat today.'" Win or lose, Aaron Kernan was going to push on. He always will, come what may on any given Sunday.