Crossmaglen’s Aaron Kernan: ‘There is a bigger picture, something more important than winning’

At the school gates many kids simply know him as one of the dads who plays football with the club. The wheel keeps turning. It will be their turn soon enough.

Aaron Kernan turns 40 next month. But it’s just another number to toss atop a tower of dizzying figures that his Crossmaglen Rangers playing career continues to amass – 18 Armagh senior football titles, eight Ulster championships and three All-Irelands.

But medals don’t have heartbeats, medals don’t line pitches or wash jerseys or brew tea or coach juveniles. Medals might give clubs a polish, but they don’t give them their soul.

In the moments after Crossmaglen’s county final victory at the Athletic Grounds three weeks ago, despite all the euphoria, Kernan’s attention was seized by the battalions of kids racing across the pitch. Giddy faces he had come to recognise from school drop-offs or buzzing around the clubhouse after underage training. The future. The soul.

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More than two decades earlier on that same pitch, he had captained the 2001 Crossmaglen minors to championship glory. Minutes after lifting the cup Kernan bounded down the steps and hurried towards the rest of his life, opening a door to a room that has remained a second home ever since. Within those walls resided his black and amber family. The Crossmaglen senior footballers were preparing to face Dromintee in the showpiece event.

“After the minor final four of us immediately went to the changing room, changed to the senior jerseys and went straight back out for the senior game,” recalls Kernan.

He won two championships that afternoon; one minor, one senior. None of the minors got gametime in the senior showdown, but all were aware of what they had received, the keys to the kingdom, admittance to the inner sanctum.

“A lot of those boys had won three All-Irelands in the years beforehand. They were about to play a county final but I remember them coming over, shaking our hands and saying, ‘well done on winning the minor’. That stayed with me.”

So, there he was three weeks ago, rooted to the same field after his latest county final victory, now the elder statesman of that inner sanctum, watching as his kids and their friends bounded towards him, eyes dancing and arms outstretched, preparing for the embrace.

“I’m 23 years now with the senior team and as you go along your goals and outlook change,” continues Kernan.

“With my own kids, I try not to force anything on them, if they want to play football they can, if they don’t then that’s fine too, the most important thing is they are happy and healthy.

“But I’ve got so much out of team sports in terms of friendships and everything that comes with it, and just because I’m involved you can see it rubbing off on them and their young friends.

“All these kids coming out on the pitch after the county final and running over to you, and it’s all the wee boys you’d see at the school, they know you as James or Joe’s dad. The buzz they get from it, that’s very special, I absolutely love it.”

Winning is not so much a habit in Cross as it is a badge of honour. They have won 47 Armagh titles now, including 23 since 1996.

Kernan retired from Armagh at the end of the 2014 season. He was just 30, but life was starting to grow around him. He became a dad for the first time that year and since 2010 he has been the managing director of Kernan Property Services.

He has three kids with Marianne – James (9), Joe (7) and Mollie (3).

At home Kernan doesn’t have to look hard to find evidence of his children getting older, but when he scans the Crossmaglen dressingroom his fellow inhabitants seem to be getting younger.

Aaron O’Neill – younger brother of Rían and Oisín – appeared in his first Armagh senior final three weeks ago. He was a Crossmaglen minor this season.

On St Patrick’s Day 2000, during those halcyon days his dad Joe managed Cross, Kernan was on the team bus at Croke Park waiting for the players following their All-Ireland final victory. When Jim McConville boarded, a huge cheer erupted as it was announced his wife had just given birth to a baby boy. They called him Cian.

Last month Cian McConville was the top scorer in the Armagh SFC final. This is the world Kernan inhabits, playing alongside team-mates who weren’t even born when he started out.

Still, ask around Cross and they’ll tell you the ageless Kernan remains one of the main drivers of the team. In his pomp with Armagh, the 2005 Young Footballer of the Year was one of the best wing backs in the country, his game-smarts and incredible engine allowed him to redefine the role.

All these years later, his football intelligence is as sharp as ever while the engine still has grunt. He was Armagh club footballer of the year in 2018 and last season Kernan was named on the Armagh club All-Star team. Number five, naturally.

“One of the big motivators for me at this stage is that I’m still maintaining high standards and setting high standards for the boys,” he says.

“With the GPS data, there are targets the management expect you to hit so it’s up to me to hit them. And I wouldn’t shy away from that, if I thought I wasn’t fit for it I would quit. I’m not there to be a passenger, I’m there to add something, regardless of age.

“And you hope that whenever you do leave then the younger players will carry that attitude with them to show the next generation, that’s how I see it working because that’s how it happened for me.”

When he does eventually finish, Kernan intends to get involved in coaching.

“There is sort of a bloodline of kids now from many of the boys who won county and All-Ireland titles with the club.

“From under-16s down to your under-6s there probably wouldn’t be a team that you’d not have a Hearty in, or a McEntee or a Bellew or a Kernan or a McConville or a McKeon. Boys who would have played together over the last 30 years, their kids are coming through now.”

Kernan is the last of his siblings left in the senior dressingroom. His dad, Joe, is vice-chairman of the club but these days he is more likely to be mucking in building Lego houses than constructing footballing empires.

“He’d still be at all the games, old habits die hard! And he’s involved in organising a golf classic every year but in terms of coaching and management, he’s had his fill of it, he just likes to sit in the background now and watch matches with no added stress or hassle.

“To be honest, I think him and mum get more of a kick now from seeing their grandchildren at the games and going out on the field afterwards than anything else.”

The many strands of the Kernan clan will travel to Omagh on Saturday as the club’s latest Ulster championship adventure begins against Trillick.

Aaron will again be on the team bus, always appreciative of Marianne’s understanding in helping his football journey continue. She will get the kids ready, pack the car and bring them to watch daddy play at Healy Park.

As for his collection of medals, he knows exactly where they are, all sitting in the same box in the same cupboard. His former Cross team-mate Paul Hearty holds a record 19 Armagh SFC medals. Even before he left the Athletic Grounds three weeks ago, folk were joshing with Kernan that he’d have to come back next year to equal the record.

But all of this has been about more than medals for quite some time now.

“Starting out you wanted to win and be part of it, but as time goes on you realise there is a bigger picture, something more important,” explains Kernan.

“It’s about who you represent and how you carry yourself on and off the field, that’s never lost on me.

“Everything I have got out of it over the years, the fun, the good times, the enjoyment, the friendships, I’ve been very fortunate. If I had the opportunity to go back, I wouldn’t hesitate to do it all over again.”

Thing is, Kernan is still doing it. He’ll be a dad at the school gates again next week. But on Saturday in Omagh, the show goes on.