The secret is in the preparation

Focus on Armagh trainer John McCloskey: Seán Moran hears about the hard work, attention to detail and dedication that has lifted Armagh to a level the rest are struggling to match

We approach the end of Ulster's year. It is also the last few days of Armagh's year - with of course an option to renew. The county is 70 minutes away from achieving what few thought possible, a successful defence of football's All-Ireland.

We approach the end of Ulster's year. After Tyrone retained the National League, the All-Ireland championship evolved into hard evidence of the province's domination. With rising pluralities - 62 per cent of the quarter-finalists, 75 per cent of the semi-finalists and 100 per cent of next Sunday's finalists - northern counties have enjoyed a level of success only possible under the qualifiers system.

For the moment disregard the statistics. Over the past 12 months - and at a quickening pace since July - there have been many tributes to Ulster custom. Central to them all has been the perception of Armagh as hard to beat, hard to play against and hard to emulate.

Not since the heyday of Seán Boylan's first Meath team has an intercounty side made it so difficult for opponents to believe in the possibilities of success.

There has been a steady flow of anecdotes, carefully crafted half-time melodramas and reports of technical detail - all feeding into the reputation.

Above all there has been the physical strength and its uninhibited application. When Christy Toye scored Donegal's goal in the semi-final, the path of its build-up was traced by flattened players who had played a part in the movement.

The man responsible for Armagh's fitness and physical conditioning is team trainer John McCloskey. His experience and study of physical preparation for elite athletes has taken him from Olympic training camps through rugby union and rugby league, Premiership soccer in England and even netball, which gave him a couple of drills he could adapt.

He's reluctant to draw any hard and fast conclusions from the success of Ulster teams - or to claim he and others in the province have discovered the neutrino that explains football's universe.

"I don't have any knowledge of what they're doing down south because I haven't been down to training so I can't give a qualified opinion. I've seen southern media turning on their teams and saying: 'why aren't you doing what Ulster are doing?' But what we've set out to do is to compete with the Dublins or Kerrys or Meaths and in the last couple of years maybe it's Ulster's turn again like in the early 1990s. These things move in cycles and I wouldn't be surprised if in two or three years Kerry come good again, or Cork or Galway, or even Laois."

McCloskey's challenge this year was to deal with the physical impact of Armagh's success last year: how to build on the high levels of residual fitness without losing the freshness that would be essential to another championship run.

"The players were very tired after last year and then you're going through that whole emotional roller-coaster of dinner dances, award nights and everyone patting you on the back. And they get fat and lazy. After Christmas we went on a holiday and came back wondering what were we going to do to get the whole thing going again."

Then again it's hard to quibble with the attitude of some of Armagh's players. Pat Spillane has commented that in the late afternoon before last November's All Stars ceremony at a stage of the day he would have traditionally associated with championship slurping, Armagh players could be seen checking into the hotel gym for their daily work-out.

"There's a core of about seven or eight players who are very professional in their attitude," says McCloskey, "very thorough in their preparation. It's the others who drift into the panel, new guys not used to the training regime who maybe haven't looked after themselves as well - either through a lack of knowledge or laziness. They're the guys you've got to concentrate on to get them into your way of thinking."

There were no initial problems on the field. In a well-hyped opening NFL fixture against Dublin - attended by 54,000 at Croke Park last February - Armagh ran away with the match.

"What we did was take it easy on them through the winter, had no formal training sessions until February. Actually the week we played Dublin was our first formal session, that Tuesday night. So the performance that day was a bit of a surprise, the way they played so well and kept it going right until the end.

"It petered out by the time we played Tyrone and tiredness set in so we decided: 'Right we'll ease off completely and work on the mental side of things, try and keep it fresh' so we changed venue, times and training days.

"We tried to avoid mucky pitches and trained in the gym during the winter, set up rowing and cycling and swimming sessions and did a lot of cross training. On the clearer nights round about March we were back on the field properly and trained from there."

The tailing-off in the county's league fortunes wasn't interpreted as anything too significant but a week after the League final, Armagh lost their first defence of the Ulster title in a seismic shock against Monaghan.

"That was a shock because you think that players are right, that they give the right body language and signals. But on the day they didn't perform and fair play to Monaghan they were the better team. As the summer progressed and they got a sniff of the championship again it became easier to train them."

Teams that win provincial titles, as Armagh had done in 2002, swear by the positive impact of that success.

When that championship is lost the natural tendency is to talk up the advantages of the qualifier system and its parallel facility for progressing to the All-Ireland stages. McCloskey is certainly an enthusiastic convert to the format.

"To me one of the benefits of the qualifier system is the fortnightly game. So you play on the Sunday, spend three to five days recovering from the game and getting them back up on their feet and then you prepare for the next game.

"It's good for the players whereas in the regular championship season you mightn't be back out for four weeks. That was the longest break we had last year and Sligo nearly caught us on the hop. A number of teams have suffered from it, particularly teams from Munster or Connacht who have had five or six weeks of a gap between games."

So, as Armagh set out on the stops-at-all-stations route, the emphasis at training had to be re-prioritised.

"One of the most important things is how you look after them. We spent a lot of time this year working on our recovery and our regeneration so the players when they come off do the cold baths and there's massage available. They get their carbohydrates and protein recovery drinks straight on coming off the field.

"Then we get the chefs in to provide good food, whether it's rice or pasta, chicken, fish, whatever. They can't eat their food at six at night because they have to train so in terms of your body cycle it's not ideal but we're giving them everything that they need to have and controlling it.

"I was at a FA conference at the weekend (before last) and there's nothing they're doing that we haven't been doing for the last couple of years and I just needed that confirmed for myself. I came away happy that we were doing as much as we can - given our environment - to maintain the players' fitness and look after their health."

The one remaining challenge for Armagh players and their management is one for which there is no preparation and discussion of which is taboo: the day that arrives when the team no longer has the All-Ireland, when a big match moves beyond even their formidable reach. McCloskey has that covered too.

"The onus on us is to try and keep ahead but that could backfire and we could go out the next Sunday and get hammered and it's somebody else's turn - but that's life and that's sport. You move on."