Driven by a sustained passion for excellence

All-Ireland Club Football Final/ Crossmaglen v Dr Crokes: Keith Duggantalks to manager Donal Murtagh about the rise and rise of Crossmaglen.

Donal Murtagh smiles wryly as he hears himself saying that, nowadays, visitors are coming to Crossmaglen "just curious to see this place where all the trouble took place".

Locals long ago grew resigned to the depiction of their town as a flashpoint. A decade of peace in Northern Ireland has given Crossmaglen a more opulent shine and the excellence of the senior football team has created more flattering headlines for the town.

Murtagh had been one of the chief influences on the Rangers' profound run of success. He was full back on the three All-Ireland-winning teams (1997, 1999, 2000) and, less than a year after retiring following a dismal defeat to Bellaghy, he has guided them back to Croke Park for the first time since.

When we met an hour before Armagh and Derry played on the local field in the National Football League, Murtagh had already taken his team for morning training in soft, constant rain, after which they sat down for Sunday lunch in the spanking-new Cross Square hotel. Just as Crossmaglen's reputation as a trouble- spot hardened into a glib half-truth, so too the notion of the town as football crazy is an exaggeration.

"See, Cross had this reputation," he explains "But the thing was, a lot of the villages around Cross would be more hard-line in attitude than Crossmaglen. Once you get this bad name, it's hard to shake it. And I would think the club has helped to change that, the way they have held their heads high and shown their discipline and been ambassadors for Armagh. And it is like any town: you have your committed football people.

"Then, others might watch the game on television and stand at their doors when we come home. And that is fine. Then there are people who would have had no interest in football for years who have become really enthusiastic about the team and wouldn't miss it for the world now."

In an ideal world, Murtagh would still be full back for his beloved Rangers. He played 20 years for the club and enjoyed a blissful run until a couple of years ago, when his body began to protest. His knee all but caved in during a championship match against Killeavy and by the time he quit after the Ulster-final loss to Bellaghy in late 2005, his back had become the fascination of many a radiography department, one bulging disc and two others as good as dead.

"I didn't care. I would crawl all week if it meant I was fit to play on the Sunday."

Being part of the 11 Armagh championship titles in a row, from 1996 to 2006, was good enough. His one gripe is he didn't receive a medal when Crossmaglen won the county title in 1986, his first year.

"I was just going on 17. But because we didn't win another championship for 10 years, it meant I played 20 years and finished with 10 medals. Paul Hearty played for 10 years and had 10 medals. I would have had the record in Armagh with 11 medals. It would have been a wee bit of stardom - for a while anyhow," he laughs.

Murtagh was still a teenager when he decided to concentrate his sporting career on his town. It is no secret he is one of the most gifted players never to have lined out in a senior championship match for his county.

He was a highly regarded minor and for a while tried to balance county under-21 commitments with senior training, partly because Joe Kernan was involved in the management with Paddy Moriarty. But he never enjoyed it. Simply attending training meant he had to hitch a lift from where he worked in Warrenpoint to Armagh in time to get another lift to training.

Those were not the safest years to be thumbing lifts in the heart of Northern Ireland but Murtagh reckoned he always knew who to look out for. That was never a worry.

"It was just all this running from pillar to post. Maybe getting back at midnight, straight to bed and then up first thing and away to work. And through it all, I trained with the club. That was my first loyalty."

He already had a sour experience at minor level when, despite being acknowledged as an outstanding prospect, he was frequently selected at corner back: "to accommodate some lads from the colleges. Ten minutes later, they'd be switching me in to full back to do a job. But the next match, I'd be back in the corner. Just got fed up of it," he says bluntly.

Murtagh grew indifferent about the county scene and long before the club scene became fashionable, he was an advocate. Placed against the overwhelming decade of dominance Crossmaglen have just enjoyed, the previous decade without a single county title seems like a black hole. Murtagh explains it away through a lackadaisical attitude to preparation.

"Nobody trained. Well, that's not true. About seven or eight of us did all year around. But there would be excuses from elsewhere. Then about six weeks before the championship, there'd be this big panic and a meeting called. That was the philosophy.

"And we had good teams. We had Aidan Short, a county man. Thomas Cassidy, a county man. Jim McConville and Joey Cunningham. Big Joe was still playing. But we just couldn't put it together. Even in 1986, when we won the championship, we were relegated in the league. That meant we were kicking Division Two football in our centenary year."

They continued to be defined by their ordinariness and inconsistency. There are several theories as to how and why Crossmaglen managed to concoct this bewildering run of form.

After 1995, they took ownership of the Armagh championship. Given the club have just won the minor, under-21 and senior championships for the first time since 1977, it seems likely they might extend their championship winning run to 15 years on the trot. That would mean almost two generations of Armagh players from all other clubs would finish their careers with no county medal.

When Mullaghbawn defeated Crossmaglen in that 1995 match, BBC television were making a documentary about the nature of football in Armagh. When it was eventually screened, the programme included footage of the Mullaghbawn boys celebrating raucously, Armagh goalkeeper Benny Tierney rubbing salt in the wound with his own brand of humour. The Crossmaglen players made a solemn pact that day to turn the corner. Two years later, they were All-Ireland champions and word began to circulate that the BBC programme had acted as a spur.

"It probably was," says Murtagh with a bleak smile. "In hindsight, we can say that the whole documentary thing was a disruption but we might have felt differently had we won that year. But Benny, in his own way, said a few things. And it was rammed down our throats for 10 years afterwards. Little does Benny know what he did for Cross football. He put us on the map. And I'll tell him that some day."

But it is likely the transformation would have occurred without any perceived slight. The emergence of Oisín McConville, the McEntee twins and Francie Bellew gave the club an unimaginable depth of talent. In that 1997 All-Ireland, they were cold outsiders against an accomplished Knockmore club who had played wonderful football in the semi-final.

Crossmaglen's full-back line was considered a weakness but Knockmore tried three different forwards on Murtagh and got no joy. That first national success felt unbeatably sweet but the defeat of Na Fianna in 2000 felt like a milestone.

"Because we had beaten a Dublin team," Murtagh emphasises. "In 1997 we beat Knockmore and in 1999 it was Crossmolina and afterwards people would say, 'Ah, sure ye only beat Mayo teams.' Which was stupid and unfair but that is what was said. So to come down and defeat a Dublin team felt very special."

If anything, Murtagh believes Crossmaglen have underachieved in the last 10 years. The 2004 All-Ireland semi-final loss to Portlaoise still gnaws. He has not sat down to watch the St Patrick's Day finals for the last seven years, partly out of superstition and partly because he becomes impatient watching others play.

This has been a privileged period for Crossmaglen. Murtagh's placid features darken for a moment when he recalls playing through the grimmest years of conflict in the Six Counties and the sheer strangeness of running a GAA club in that environment.

"When you think back to some of the things that went on, you would wonder how people weren't blown to bits when you see some of the operations. Like mortars being fired in over the social club into the barracks. They could have landed anywhere. So as a club we were lucky that civilians were not seriously hurt."

But as he points out, half the present team have no firm memories of "trouble". Asked to source the reason for Crossmaglen's almost unnatural run of success in the volatile championship environment, Murtagh automatically chooses John McEntee as an example.

"John had some fine years with Armagh. But with Armagh, he was just a shadow of the man he was with us. He was huge with Crossmaglen. I remember the day in 2000 when Castleblaney thumped us in the first round. They taught us a lesson.

"We had two All-Ireland titles and we were sick of the sight of each other. It felt like we were living in the dressing room. And Blaney made a laugh of us, playing the ball back and forth over our heads. But it didn't hurt. We were that tired. In the previous six years, we had about eight weeks off. The only reason we were hammered that day was because John McEntee had a bad game. For two years, that man carried the middle of the field."

He suggests that when it comes to Crossmaglen, the players have a reserve, a capacity for discovering new ways to avoid losing.

Other Armagh clubs must be heartily sick being bit players in this collective obsession for greatness that has gripped the Rangers club.

"Nobody likes a monopoly," admits Murtagh. "There is a notion in Armagh that we are bad for football in the county. That is nonsense. Armagh won nothing pre-Crossmaglen. If the other Armagh clubs are good enough on the day, let them beat us. If they are not, keep their mouths shut."

Crossmaglen have become accustomed to being judged on the national stage, regarding it as their natural habitat and Murtagh has studied the calibre of Dr Crokes.

"Some day this is all going to come to a halt," he says softly. "Some day a team is going to beat us. We go in as favourites but no teams know how to win finals like Kerry teams. They will have the same mentality as us. If we lose, there is nothing can be said of the team. There is no shame in losing."

But in Crossmaglen they prefer to avoid it all the same.