There's a little scene in the corridor which sums up the cruel difference between winning and losing, writes Tom Humphries.

The game is dead and Joe Kernan is leaning with his back against the cool of a wall, holding court. A large semi-circle of journalists is gathered in front of him, entirely blocking the corridor.

Joe is in fine humour. Our laughter at his one-liners fills the space. "Keep writin' us off boys," he says, "we love it. Don't think we don't use it!"

From behind the happy crescent of media there is a slight shuffling. Nobody turns. A voice says "Lads, lads, Tommy Lyons is trying to get through". We squeeze in together out of respect for the bereaved. Tommy Lyons passes into the Armagh dressing-room to congratulate the conquerors. We look back at Joe Kernan. Say some more Joe, says some more.

Three times now in the space of a year Armagh have come down the road and beaten Dublin on a bog day in Croke Park. It's the most mortality that Dublin football has ever had to deal with, the sharpest reminder yet of a changed world order. For Armagh each win is nourishing and restorative. They love these days.

"We said at half-time that we were giving the ball away too much," says Joe, painting a picture of calmness and serenity amidst the orange. "In the second half we used nearly every ball. We still had a few silly ones, but I'm very proud of everyone."

Straight certainties. Articles of faith. Things that win football games. Kernan's simple tenets were never going to be rocked by the loss of Oisín McConville and Paddy McKeever. Not even shaken.

"No. Never. You never say that. It's bred into the team that you don't quit till the final whistle goes. Oisín did well to get here, did well early on. He was struggling a wee bit and I took him off. He said to me he was okay. I think, though, he boys did it for Oisín, because there's been too many days when he has done it for them in the last six or seven years. Paddy was sent off, but we know we play well with 14 men."

So they coped. Thrived even.

"At half-time we said 'lift the heads, we have nothing to be afraid of'. We changed it a wee bit. We put Tony McEntee back at centre half and we gave Geezer (Kieran McGeeney) the free role to attack. We'd been giving the ball away and not linking well enough. We hit too many direct balls in the first half but we rectified it. The boys lifted themselves.

"Listen, people gave these boys stick and said they were poor All-Ireland champions. I never saw a poor team win an All-Ireland yet. They were worthy winners last year, nobody could beat them. We are in the last 12, we've earned the right. Thanks to our association we have this back door. When the draw for this round was made our season turned around. They proved themselves today."

Did you need a game like this Joe?

"Definitely." Pause. "One like this in the final would have been better though. It was nerve-racking but a great game of football. You play bad and win you don't care, you play well it's better."

Some time later Tommy Lyons drew a cluster of tape recorders and microphones around himself. His face had an unfamiliar darkness to it. He hates these days.

Where did it go wrong? "I don't know. I don't know really. We played very well in the first half. I was disappointed we only went in eight-four, we should have had maybe 11 points. We came out, started the second half very well and then everything . . .

"Certainly the Armagh man deserved to go, another couple deserved to go as far as I'm concerned. Cluxton, they tell me Cluxton drew a kick on your man. If he did he deserved to go as well. Just fucking ridiculous stuff. A goalie getting sent off like that. Just turned the whole game, after that we were just chasing shadows."

All the more so when the remedy is removing a centre back and the opposition centre forward suddenly pops up and scores four points.

"It's only a lottery, no matter who you took off, it just seemed to go," said Tommy shaking his head.

But why Jonny Magee? How did you decide to take him off.

"Don't be asking questions like that, for jaysus sake," says Tommy.

Maybe it's too soon. The maelstrom of the second half will take some sorting. Dublin lost out physically and mentally. The final stages were thunderous but it never seemed as if Dublin were going to win; the thunder came from galloping Armagh hooves.

"We seemed to be grasping at straws for the last 25 minutes. We seemed to get beat in midfield for all the game, really. They were piling forward on these little shuttle breaks they make when they get on top. We can't say they didn't deserve to win it, but I think if Stephen Cluxton didn't get sent off we would have won that game today. They won 11-3 in the second half. Do that and you deserve to win the game. It all hinged on that."

And the refereeing? In freefall for a while?

"Pat had a bad day in the office. No doubt. We didn't throw boxes, they did. That's life. In the end of the day they deserved to win. We missed Darren Homan when he went off. Darren had a magnificent game for a man who shouldn't have lined out."

All the natural ebullience and showmanship is gone out of Tommy now. He's a man who loves winning, a man who draws his oxygen from success. Tommy Lyons as a losing manager doesn't quite work. He wraps it up soberly.

"We're out of the championship in early July. If you're not good enough you're as well to be gone in early July as in late August. It proved today that we're not good enough. We all have to sit down and regroup and we've a lot more work to do.

"Last February you were here and I said it was men versus boys. It still is. We're still players short, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to see that. It's hard to get young fellas ready for that intensity of battle like that. We need to find more players. We have a lot of the one standard."

Show over. Nothing more to see. Move along folks.