Enjoyment, pure and simple, keeps Boylan at the helm

THOSE who saw the Colm O’Rourke feature on TG4 at the week-end would have seen a young-looking Sean Boylan around the dug-out area in Croke Park in footage of that epic Meath/Dublin marathon in 1991.

The Dunboyne herbalist the GAA's version of Peter Pan will be there once more on Sunday, pacing the line with that other giant of Gaelic Games, Mick O'Dwyer, when Meath face up to holders Laois in the Bank of Ireland Leinster semi-final.

Boylan has been guiding the fortunes of Meath since the winter of 1982, annexing two All-Irelands at the end of that decade and two more in the late nineties. There were a few times when his management came under serious pressure and even recently he had to fight off a few challenges to his leadership. If you ask him what has kept him going all that time, what sustains such amazing commitment, he will tell you it's because he gets so much enjoyment from it. "If you don't, you shouldn't be involved,'' he says in matter-of-fact fashion.

The current team features a new goalkeeper David Gallagher, from the Dunboyne club who took over after family and work pressures forced Cormac Sullivan to withdraw. It still includes familiar names like Darren Fay, Paddy Reynolds, Mark O'Reilly, Trevor Giles and Evan Kelly. Also back is attacker Daithí Regan who was making big progress last year until he was injured. And, Graham Geraghty has returned to the fold although very much in the background after the County Board lifted the remainder of a suspension imposed last year.

Boylan says while he is pleased to have him back, Geraghty hasn't played for 34 weeks and for that reason won't be involved on Sunday. Clearly his immediate future with the county depends on the result of this game.

"The thing is that Graham is a great footballer. We talked before the meeting with the County Board, again after the meeting and we met again on Tuesday. And, he actually came training with us that night. As the fellow says he's a Meath man and we'll be glad of anyone we get!''

Taking an overview, he concedes progress has been slow at times: "Like the curate's egg, we were good and bad. We were glad to get over Wicklow, which was a big one for us. Then we had club championships the following week and picked up some injuries. After that we played a couple of challenge matches, but didn't play well. That wasn't pleasing at all.

"We lost one game by a margin of ten points and it wasn't that we were not trying, it's just that we were not good, as simple as that. That troubled us a lot. The game was played only Monday of last week.''

Typically, the Meath manager was fulsome in his praise of what Mick O'Dwyer has achieved in his short time with Laois describing the progress under his astute direction as "astonishing".

"They had a phenomenal year, last year. We played them in the League this year and led them by six or seven points, but they came back and they beat us well. That was below in Portlaoise and they played really good football."

His wish for Meath is to be "competitive again". "Some of the lads might not have a bigger game again and that's the truth of it. We are against the Leinster champions lads who were unlucky in the All-Ireland quarter-final last year and they'll want to go further. And we want to go further. It has the makings of a great game. If you're going to do it at all, you want to do it against the best. And it's great to see their big guns back.''