Buzz back in Meath, says Royal master

PICKING up his 12-year-old daughter from horse-riding last Tuesday night, Seán Boylan became fully aware of how the seemingly trivial case of an O’Byrne Cup Shield final had suddenly become much more important.

“The first thing she said to me in the car was ‘Meath and Dublin on Saturday, daddy’,” laughed Boylan after the Royals qualified for tomorrow’s final that evening.

“Doireann was only a year old when we won the All-Ireland (in 1999) so she wouldn’t remember how things were.

“It’s gas. I know people say it’s only the Shield and it’s January but I expect it to be a packed house.”

Boylan, for one, will be there and he’s enthused by conversations with some of his former charges.

He mightn’t have been happy with the manner in which his former selector Eamonn O’Brien was ousted but he likes what he’s hearing so far about Meath under Seamus McEnaney.

“The buzz is good, the talk is good and the lads are enjoying it. You know, hope springs eternal. They got 80% of the way last year and 90% the year before and then 80% in 2007.

“There are a lot of really good lads who have been there for a long time and you’d just love to see them reaching the holy grail.”

He isn’t hesitant to point out they almost grasped it under his friend O’Brien. Got them 90% and 80% of the way there, he did, and a first Leinster title in nine years last season.

Still, it wasn’t enough to save him — much to Boylan’s chagrin.

“I would have been hurt with the way Eamonn O’Brien was treated, to be honest. It was appalling and if Eamonn O’Brien wasn’t going, I know Seamus McEnaney wouldn’t have gone against him. But it was a mad moment and sometimes good things can come from such things.”

Boylan wouldn’t go as far as saying the end justified the means but he admires the audacity of the selection committee to recommend the county’s first outside senior football manager.

“Two years ago they were going to go with Luke Dempsey and the talk at the time was that we were never going to bring anybody in from outside.

“If you decide to give committee a job and ask them to select who they think is the right person, they’re going to pick who they think is the right person, regardless of where he is from.

“Knowing the people involved, they would have done their best. It mightn’t be always easier to tell it as they see it but they had the balls to do it.”

McEnaney has good men with him — Liam Harnan and Barry Callaghan, lads with two All-Irelands each.

“You could ask why they wouldn’t do it themselves but they decided they wouldn’t,” said Boylan.

McEnaney and the pair of them are close to finalising their panel for the league, although they may have been better served by a run in the O’Byrne Cup instead of the Shield.

Their interest in the former came to an end at the first hurdle when UCD edged them out in Navan. If Boylan had his way, the students wouldn’t have been in the competition at all.

“I don’t go along with colleges playing in the pre-season competitions,” he said. “I don’t believe it should happen. The O’Byrne Cup is for what? It was set up for a fund with the money going towards injured players but Jaysus we’re creating more injuries in it.

“I’m not being old-fashioned; I’m just trying to be practical because I’ve never seen two years the same in all the years I’ve been involved. Some teams needed an awful amount of training whereas there were those who didn’t need a huge amount at all.”

The heavy amount of games placed on players in the first quarter of the year is a bugbear of Boylan’s.

He supports the return of an autumn start to the National League.

“I think the break from inter-county scene for some teams from last June or July is far too long. When you’ve a squad now from February until the season is over, it costs an awful amount of money but time as well.

“Just when you have them right, you throw it all away. That doesn’t make sense. Certain aspects of it have to be restructured.

“I’m five years away from it now but there was a time when you had three league matches in October and November and that gave the lads a chance who did all the training with the squad but didn’t make the championship.

“They carried that championship spirit into the league. That’s why we took it incredibly seriously because it told us more about ourselves.

“Years ago, December and January were really the close season. But now you have a situation where you came back after Christmas and every lad is at third level and playing football at that grade.”

While he has an issue with colleges in the pre-season competitions he wholeheartedly endorses the idea of releasing student inter-county players to concentrate on their colleges.

“Be it the Trench, Sigerson or Fitzgibbon Cup, they’re all caught up in it because you have to honour your college. I had no problem with lads playing Sigerson. You can’t serve a thousand masters. Training with the college was enough.”

Boylan also warns players will look to other sports if, by way of the close season, they are denied the opportunity to compete at inter-county level for months on end. To make his point, he recalls when he first brought Graham Geraghty into the senior panel.

“We were training for the championship and the under-21s were playing the following weekend. The lads in charge of the U21 team said to him, ‘No, you’re not to play with Seán’.

“So I brought him in just to have a look. After a while, he asked if he could go and I said ‘Not at all’.

“I pick up the Meath Chronicle the following Wednesday and what do I read but Graham Geraghty sent off playing soccer for Kentstown!

“You can’t store fitness and young people are going to play something else if they’re not playing Gaelic games. They’re not going home to hibernate; they’re not grizzly bears.

“You don’t have to have committees as such, just some people together who have been through it and surely to God you can put a structure on it because this isn’t working. Fellas want to play.”

And Boylan still knows how to talk football.