Many people can remember where they were when hearing of famous events in world history. Like the assassination of President John F Kennedy, the killing of John Lennon or the releasing from jail of Nelson Mandela. Similarly Meath GAA fans will in years to come recall their whereabouts when getting the news of Sean Boylan stepping down after 23 years as manager of the Royal County senior football team. This writer was at home at the end of a long day in front of his computer on August 31st last when receiving a text message from another local sports reporter - there was no such thing when the little man from Dunboyne set out on a remarkable voyage in the autumn of 1982. "I have just heard that Sean has pulled out" stated the text and a couple of phone calls confirmed that we had indeed come to the end of an amazing innings by one of the most popular men in the history of the GAA in Meath. Little did we know what effect he would have on people throughout the county when he took on a job that nobody seemed to want all that time ago. Meath had lost to Wexford and Longford in successive years and morale was at its lowest for many moons. Two days after the news broke yours truly and two other local reporters called to Sean Boylan in his Dunboyne home and after handshakes, the exchanging of pleasantries with the retiring manager and his wife Tina and enjoying the tea and brown bread served, we reeled in the years since 1982. While I thought it was best for Sean to step aside, there was sadness after hearing the news. A few months earlier another man with a wonderful record of long service, Pope John Paul 11, passed away and there was much sadness in this country. While Sean Boylan did not die, his departure from the Royal helm hit many Meath people like a death in the family. We began to think of all the wonderful days he had brought us, his teams made us so proud to be from Meath and despite criticism from various quarters, the record of success was something which many other counties envied. That day in Dunboyne Sean looked very relaxed, as if he was glad to be out of the position in which he had 'the time of my life.' Like the Republic of Ireland soccer team in recent seasons, the long-serving manager has not had the same strength in depth in his panel in this decade as in the '80s and'90s. There is an old saying in football that a player is as good as his last kick of the ball and so it also was with Sean Boylan. After the exciting summer and topsy-turvy autumn of 2001, Meath found it impossible to beat any of the top counties in the championship, forgot how to win at Croke Park and the knives were out for the man who once could do little wrong. Before 1982 Sean Boylan was better known as a county hurler and was a masseur with the football team. He succeeded Mick O'Brien, who had steered Meath to a National League triumph in 1975 and was unlucky in Leinster finals in the next two years, and got the position because none of the other people nominated wanted to 'run.' Shortly after getting the job Boylan took a team to Edgeworthstown for a McGovern Cup tournament game against Longford and with Colm O'Rourke the captain, they returned with a trophy after a 2-7 to 0-5 win over the home county. Meath's first National League game under their new boss was a Division 2 clash against Wicklow at Pairc Tailteann which the hosts won by 1-11 to 0-9. The man who succeeded Sean Boylan, Eamonn Barry, scored five points that day and Colm O'Rourke got 1-2. Around that time O'Rourke said that if Boylan stayed around long enough they would make a manager of him! He stayed longer than any mother-in-law and helped Meath win four All-Irelands, eight Leinster titles, three National Leagues and a Centenary Cup. There were also four O'Byrne Cup successes and the first of them was gained in 1983 when Longford were defeated by 1-11 to 1-9 at Pearse Park. Meath met Dublin 21 times in championship football during the Boylan years and two of those clashes were in 1983 when the Dubs eventually won by a point after extra time in a replay. There were ups and downs in 1984 with Meath taking the Centenary Cup with a 0-10 to 0-8 final victory over Monaghan. However, they were found wanting in the championship when Dublin beat them by 2-10 to 1-9 in the Leinster decider. We wondered would the Royal County ever get back to the top in their province and even more so when Laois inflicted a demoralising 2-11 to 0-7 defeat at Tullamore in 1985. That year, with the cumbersome seven selectors system dispensed with, Boylan had just two assistants, choosing former All-Ireland Winners Pat Reynolds and Tony Brennan. After the dark day in Tullamore, the Meath Chronicle carried a picture of a black coffin on its front page the following Wednesday. Again it appeared as if a crisis situation in Meath football had been arrived at and there were ''Boylan should go'' suggestions. The manager recalled people passing the dressing-room after the loss to Laois and comparing the team to old women. Such comments obviously hurt and "that day the lads made up their mind that they were going to do something," recalled Boylan, who later that year beat the challenge of Paul Kenny to hold on to the position. Sean had suggested to Pat and Tony that they look to the intermediate and junior clubs for new talent and in the 1985-'86 league players like Terry Ferguson, Liam Harnan, P. J. Gillic and Brian Stafford were brought in. That worked very well. In the Boylan Years book, edited and published by Liam Hayes, it was suggested that when 1986 dawned, Sean Boylan knew that his career as Meath manager might have only months remaining. "Unless Meath won something, he was kaput. That something was going to have to be a Leinster title." The title was delivered for the first title since the amazing 2-22 to 5-12 final victory over Offaly in 1970. Scores were much scarcer than in the crazy decider of 16 years earlier with Meath out pointing Dublin by 0-9 to 0-7 on a very wet afternoon. "As far as I am concerned, I celebrated that win more than any other ever after for Meath. The All-Ireland wins after didn't even compare, they were almost an anticlimax. The success of Meath since that can be put down to that day, as far as I am concerned, because a lot of what happened after that wouldn't have happened if we didn't win that game," said Colm O'Rourke in the same publication. Then Meath lost to the all-conquering Kerry side of the time in the penultimate round of the 1986 championship. "We knew that day (at least I knew) that to win the Leinster again and to win the All-Ireland we had to be at least seven points better," said Sean Boylan last September. "The lads hadn't learned how to win yet and when they did learn how to win, there were umpteen matches that they won which they probably shouldn't have won. It was a confidence thing," he added. The team gained enough confidence to win the next two All-Irelands and played in four of the next five finals. The 1987 and '88 triumphs were at the expense of Cork, who replaced Kerry as Munster's top team for a few seasons just as Meath took over from Dublin in Leinster. Joe Cassells was the winning captain in 1987 and it was a well-deserved success for him along with Colm O'Rourke and Gerry McEntee who had been soldiering with the team since the mid '70s. O'Rourke scored the goal as Meath won the 1987 final by 1-14 to 0-11. The most successful year during the Sean Boylan era was 1988 when both the National League and All-Ireland titles were won with 14 players on the pitch. Also both were won in replays with Kevin Foley being dismissed in part two of the league decider and Gerry McEntee getting marching orders in the second autumn encounter with Cork that year. Meath showed true grit to overcome the big setback and retain the Sam Maguire Cup on a 0-13 to 0-12 scoreline. The first game ended 1-9 to Meath's 0-12 with a late Brian Stafford pointed free giving Boylan's men another bite at the cherry. They showed a lot more bite in the replay and the aggressive approach of the team was criticised in certain quarters. In his Final Whistle autobiography Colm O'Rourke remarked that Cork hit hard the first day and left three players, including himself the worse for wear. Cork should have won that day but Meath did not get enough credit for their defiant display in the replay. Sean Boylan was annoyed over the criticism and treatment of the team that year. "The team were league and All-Ireland champions for the second year in a row. I was annoyed because the lads weren't getting the credit they were due, what also annoyed me was the fact that the league winners of the time usually got a trip to America and the All-Ireland winners went away with the All Stars," he said. The manager referred to subsequent trips which Meath did not get though deserving of them. "That was very insulting to fellows who had helped to pack Croke Park on quite a number of occasions. Teams that won in other years all got trips, those things never leave you, they are always there with you. The Meath teams I had were a very honourable bunch of men who played it fair, played it hard and played within the rules," he added. After losing to Dublin in the 1989 Leinster final, Meath bounced back to claim the next two. They won the NFL with a final victory over Down in 1990 but Cork got their revenge in that year's All-Ireland final. Then there was the four-match saga with Dublin in 1991 and in their tenth championship outing of a remarkable year Meath fell at the final fence as Down took All-Ireland honours. The games with Dublin, while dominated by scrappy play, gave the GAA a tremendous boost and the fourth of them was the first big Gaelic football match to be played on a Saturday and was shown live on television. That was a few years before live coverage of games in the early rounds of the championship became a regular feature of programming. In each of the four games Dublin looked most likely to win and especially in the fourth before the sensation end to end passing movement and Kevin Foley's goal which was followed by David Beggy's winning point. Later that year the loss of Robbie O'Malley and Colm O'Rourke from the starting line-up was sorely felt as Down retained their record of never losing in an All-Ireland final. After that there were a few lean years although another National League success was gained in 1994 with Armagh being defeated in the final. After a championship exit at the hands of Dublin that year one of the local papers ran a survey as to whether Boylan should go or stay. The pressure was on the man from Dunboyne after a ten points defeat by the Dubs in the 1995 Leinster final. Some supporters who had become well used to celebrating triumphs were finding it difficult to accept four years in a row without a provincial success. Boylan beat Shane McEntee in the first contest for the position in ten years and said he did not feel like walking away from a team which lost a Leinster final by ten points. When Meath played Carlow in the first round of the 1996 Leinster SFC some supporters felt that the minnows from the south east might beat them. Sean Boylan had introduced championship debutants in Darren Fay, Mark O'Reilly, Paddy Reynolds and Barry Callaghan. Meath beat Carlow with 18 points to spare and most of you know what happened after that. Remarkably a new team containing two previous All-Ireland winners, Martin O'Connell and Colm Coyle, was built by Boylan, built so well that the side captained by Tommy Dowd went on to gain an unlikely Sam Maguire success. Before that there was a first championship victory over Dublin since 1991, the 0-10 to 0-8 win coming after three defeats in as many years to the Royal County's greatest rivals. That was followed by victories over Tyrone and Mayo and subsequent moaning from both losers. The final triumph at the expense of Mayo was quite dramatic and the two games left lots of memories. Especially Colm Coyle's dramatic long-range levelling point which hopped over the bar to send the tie to a replay in the second game the big row involving nearly every player on the pitch soon after the resumption., Tommy Dowd's well-taken goal and at the end Brendan Reilly's brilliant winning point. Like in 1988, the 1996 triumph was clouded by controversy. Sean Boylan was hurt that eight of his players were suspended for their part in a row which they did not start. "We all know the way it started, ye all know who started it and all the crying the whinging and the nonsense that went on about it, you couldn't stop it," he said. "It shouldn't have happened, it wasn't right but what people lost sight of afterwards was how few frees there were in the match, the type of football that was played and at the end there was one of the most glorious passes ever seen, from Trevor Giles into Brendan Reilly who put the ball over the bar from the most acute angle for the winning point," he added. Sean Boylan recalled going to Howth one evening with wife Tina after that final in an effort to 'get away from it all.' After parking his car, he encountered former Dublin dual star Lar Foley (since sadly deceased), who remarked "Jaysus, Sean it was bad enough for them (Mayo) to lose the match but they lost the row as well!" After the highs of 1996, the following two years were disappointing for Meath's Offaly and Kildare became the cream of Leinster. The three games against Kildare in '97 would probably have been more talked about but for the amazing saga six years earlier. The second chapter of the exciting '97 series which ended Meath 2-20, Kildare 3-17 after extra time was one of the best games ever seen by this writer. After two provincial final defeats, Meath got back to their old trick in 1999, defeating Dublin in the Leinster decider, 1-14 to 0-12, with Ollie Murphy the star of the show. That was followed by wins over Armagh and Cork and a fourth All-Ireland triumph during the Sean Boylan era. The manager who was very good at turning ordinary players into heroes brought on a few journeymen to do the spadework for star men like Darren Fay, John McDermott, Trevor Giles and Graham Geraghty, who was the '99 captain. After losing in the first round to Offaly in 2000, the qualifiers were introduced the following year. But Meath took the main road route to another All-Ireland final in 2001. That year there were victories over Gaelic football's 'big two' with Dublin defeated by a goal in the Leinster final and Kerry losing an unreal All-Ireland semi-final by 15 points. But remarkably after that Meath only won one game at Croke Park (against Wicklow in 2004) and the 0-8 to 0-17 final loss to Galway was a return to earth with a big bang after the dizzy heights of a few weeks earlier. After that Meath went a good bit further down the slippery slope and have not qualified for the closing stages of the championship since. In Leinster there were defeats to Dublin, Kildare and Laois and for four years in a row Ulster teams, Donegal, Fermanagh (twice) and Cavan, ushered Meath out of the championship in the qualifiers. Although, Sean obviously would not admit, he did not have as strong a pool of players as in previous years. The final chapter of The Boylan Years suggested that after the 1999 All-Ireland triumph would have been the ideal time to step aside. But he does not regret going a few years earlier. "While at the end of the long road, he was unhappy about a few things," he recently remarked. "There is no animosity in the world; I've had the time of my life." Indeed Sean Boylan was never a man to bear ill will towards anyone. He respected all who came in contact with him and in return, most people held a lot of respect for him. He was a good friend to the media, always making himself available before and after matches, afterwards win, lose or draw. Boylan rates the 1987 All-Ireland triumph as his favourite memory from the 23 years. "That was an amazing day because it had been 20 years since the previous All-Ireland triumph and some of the greatest footballers to put on a Meath jersey had achieved what they always wanted, for a long time it looked as if it might never happen for them," he said. "The biggest disappointments were losing the 1991 final to Down. We couldn't take from Down's performance but it would have been the icing on the cake if the lads had got the All-Ireland after playing ten games. But they got a lot of credit for the way they conducted themselves in defeat. The final defeat in 2001 was another big disappointment; we didn't perform on the day." Let's leave the last words about Sean Boylan to one of his greatest players, Colm O'Rourke in another extract from The Final Whistle. "One of his biggest assets was his loyalty. Players were never criticised publicly, and whatever harsh words were said, were said in private and were expected to be left there. And when we lost, he stood by the team. "Sean has set standards in Meath which nobody else can expect to match and now every young boy in the county would give anything to get on the Meath team. It's a big change from when he took over and that, perhaps, is his greatest contribution of all." Tweet

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