Meath GAA discussion thread

Obrieski wrote: »

Paid the €6 to watch the Ratoath Nobber match on Meath GAA TV. Great service I must say. Couple of minor teething issues but that is to be expected. Picture and sound quality were both very good and even had commentary which was excellent. Hopefully continues to be rolled out.

As for the game, once Ratoath clicked into gear their pace and power is staggering. Daithi McGowan is a very good player and one to keep an eye out for

Gaeil Colmcille put their game up on Facebook Live. Fair play to them for trying it but the quality was poor and the two lads streaming it didn’t seem to realise the sound was on and they were chatting away throughout - at one of the water breaks they turned round to show the back (thankfully!) of a lad standing at a ditch pissing!

From what I could make out, they’ll need to hugely improve for their next game against Dunboyne. Typical first game though. Both teams very afraid of making mistakes and playing quite a reserved game.

Hammer Archer wrote: »

I see St. Paul's are still plugging away in the Premier Championship Division 4.

We've played St Paul's in a few friendlies and they're a good bunch. Lads that just want to play ball and enjoy it. They won't be found wanting for a bit of fight if they're in the mix anyway.

rpurfield wrote: »

I'm just editing this to say going through the results and fixtures and I see Dunboyne have four adult teams out. SFC, Junior Premier 1, 2 and 6. The six team plays today but the other three all won, the closest was the third team "only" won by a point! That is some serious amount of adult players.

And some Dunboyne people also like to refer to their fellow parishioners Kilbride as their junior team!

dobman88 wrote: »

We have the same in Ashbourne. Senior, premier 1, 3 and 8. The junior section gets at least 40 to every training session, we've also had a lot of lads coming back with the shorter season this year. I cant speak for the senior section as them and the premier 1 side would.train together.

I also see Dunshauglin have a 3rd team in now which is pretty good going too.

Yeah ye have a massive pick as well in fairness. I'm suprised Ratoath haven't more adult teams going as well given then numbers they have coming through.

I recall Maynooth trying to get people to do a medal presentation for an underage team, several people who were contacted asked for a fee, when Sean was asked he was out at the drop of a hat. A pure gentleman.

Hammer Archer wrote: »

Think it's a mark of the man that you won't hear a bad word said about him even from fans of our biggest rivals at the time.

There is a respect for Sean everywhere his name is mentioned. As a Dub he broke our hearts on many occasions when he was in charge of Meath.

I met him a few times at various events and games over the years and he was always a gentleman. He was just a bit different in that he was so humble.
Sometimes the term "Role Model" is used a little loosely but Sean Boylan is everything a role model should aspire to.
Without doubt one of the most respected men in GAA world and beyond.

rpurfield wrote: »

Really bitter piece from Tommy Conlon in the Sindo today about Sean's teams. Actually still annoyed at it and I read it a couple of hours ago. Ironically placed on the same page as O'Rourke's column!

aw yes couldnt believe whatbi read from conlon, extremely bitter Lietrim man. the amount of dredging up the past he did. making tyrone all of people out to be victims that was the biggest laugh.

rpurfield wrote: »

Really bitter piece from Tommy Conlon in the Sindo today about Sean's teams. Actually still annoyed at it and I read it a couple of hours ago. Ironically placed on the same page as O'Rourke's column!

All he said was that the Meath teams he managed were very physical and it was hard to reconcile that with the man himself because he is such a nice person.
If you read the article properly you will see he praised Boylan as well.

Enigma of Sean Boylan goes unexplained in documentary that rewrites history and whitewashes inconvenient facts

The re-writing of history, the whitewashing of inconvenient facts, is fresh salt in old wounds

Everybody is unique but some individuals are so unique unto themselves, they cannot be compared to anyone else. Once the original is made, the mould is thrown away.

Seán Boylan belongs in this rarefied category. The former Meath manager is a true one-off, by all accounts a special human being.

And yet the abiding irony of his career in Gaelic football is that he left people all over the country wondering if there were in fact two Seán Boylans. It was the mystery that was never solved. It came down to one question that fans of the game repeatedly asked during his 23 years in charge of the Royals: how could such a nice man send out such brutish teams?

Unfortunately the new documentary about him, shown on RTÉ last Thursday night, failed miserably to get to the heart of this matter. The title alone was a portent of the sycophantic treatment that was to follow. Calling it simply Seán suggested that this was going to be a cosy, sentimental affair. He was a famous man in those years and most people who didn't know him referred to him as "Boylan". RTÉ should have told the maker of the film, Alan Bradley, to change the title, if only to confer some semblance of editorial professionalism on the production.

It succeeds in other areas. There are times when Boylan speaks personally and revealingly. "In many ways I was cut in two with shyness," he says of himself as a young man. In those years he felt a deep calling to holy orders. He dreamed of becoming a Cistercian monk. He was drawn to the rituals, the chanting and vespers, the writings of Thomas Merton in particular. He inherited the family business in herbal medicine and became steeped in its lore. Through this he became a helper and healer and comforter to suffering humanity. This aspect of his life is not dwelt on in the film but it is known generally that many people came to him in their hour of need and that he did not turn them away. The amount of good deeds he quietly performed is legion. As a herbalist he was connected to the natural world; it seemed to go hand in hand with an intuitive understanding of human nature too.

And yet this palpably decent man was responsible for teams which were frequently reviled for their lack of decency. Meath in those years never seemed to fully trust themselves as footballers; attrition and aggression were needed too.

Maybe the long lens of history will place them in the context of a sport which for most of its organised life had violence baked into its culture. It was tolerated, permitted, condoned. Assault and battery were commonplace. The game has been cleaned up considerably over the last 20 years, especially at county level. It is possible, then, that future historians will place Meath football from the late 1980s and early '90s as the last incarnation of that long and ignoble era before the rules changed and the GAA finally clamped down on it seriously. Irish society was also changing. Looking back on some of those games from the 1980s now, it was dinosaur stuff - primitive and backward.

The celebrated Kerry team of 1975-86 brought glory on the game as well as themselves. They elevated Gaelic football with their charisma and class. They were the arch-modernists, ahead of their time, a team that revolutionised the game with their pace and artistry. When Meath took over as champions in 1987 and '88, it was like going back to the dark ages.

So, when a new Galway team won the All-Ireland in 1998 with their sweeping style and flair, it signalled the end of all that. It was a flat-out rejection of the macho cynicism that had become normalised in Gaelic football. According to that grim worldview, the end justified the means; so long as you won, it didn't matter how you did it. It wasn't about skill and creativity on the ball, it was about dominating your opponents physically and psychologically.

Boylan was appointed out of left field in September 1982. By 1984 they were picking up momentum and in '86 they won the first of the eight Leinster titles they would claim during his epic career. In the final they beat Dublin, who lost their free taker Barney Rock after his collar bone was broken in a collision with Liam Harnan.

The late Paddy Downey, then the venerable Gaelic Games Correspondent of The Irish Times, described it as a great day for Meath. "But not so, alas, for Gaelic football," he added. "What must be criticised very strongly was the unnecessarily heavy tackling which both sides indulged in. Players lunged at each other in what seemed lunatic abandon and there were times in the first half when the referee could have lost control of the proceedings."

This would become a familiar scenario over the next decade and more. In the 1988 All-Ireland final replay against Cork, Gerry McEntee was sent off after seven minutes. for a punch on Niall Cahalane. From that point to the final whistle, Meath outworked and outhustled Cork. They also fouled their opponents repeatedly, sometimes with swinging arms to the head. It was unashamedly cynical.

In his report on the 1990 national league semi-final between the same teams, Downey mentioned "the ugly incidents, dangerous tackling, frequent niggling fouls and the pervasive mood of ill-temper." He recorded some of those incidents and added: "A question needs to be asked: why are so many of Meath's finest victories in recent times - especially those over Cork - clouded in controversy? Meath should ask themselves the same question. The game left another black mark on Gaelic football."

This too became a recurring theme of those years. Con Houlihan was another venerable sportswriter back then who has also gone to the great ale house in the sky. Con was at his usual post on the Canal End for the 1996 Leinster final. From there he watched as the Meath corner-back Mark O'Reilly spent the afternoon pulling and dragging out of Charlie Redmond. In his piece for the Sunday World a week later, Houlihan voiced his dismay at what he'd witnessed. He added: "Please can we have our game back?"

He wasn't the only one wondering about the state of the game back then. Obviously it didn't go unnoticed by the manager and his players. When asked to comment, they frequently blamed "the media" for these negative portrayals, as if they had nothing to do with it themselves. And as if the rest of the country couldn't see what was happening with their own eyes. Funnily enough, when you met the players in person, in general they couldn't be sounder. By and large they were affable, humble, likeable lads.

But the point being made by Downey and Houlihan and others was not made in isolation. It reflected what was being said by fans of Gaelic football across Ireland: Meath were demeaning the game, they were dragging it through the mud. And yet, there was an irony at work here too: Meath were also simultaneously providing some of the best entertainment in Irish sport. That same will to win at any cost also meant a refusal to accept defeat at any cost. As a result, they became famous for their comebacks from seemingly insurmountable deficits. It led to spectacular drama and tension and enjoyment in many of their matches. Their four-game saga with Dublin in 1991 was peak Meath in this regard. It put the senior football championship back at the centre of the Irish sporting landscape. They undoubtedly rendered the game a service in terms of promoting it, whilst also on occasion showcasing a level of ignorance that should have embarrassed them.

Through it all, Boylan remained an enigma. His players could have inflicted assault and battery on the field, but in the post-match interview, this lovely man would appear and say lovely things about everyone. He was apparently oblivious to the cognitive dissonance between what his players were doing and what he was saying.

He never let his guard down in television or press interviews. His shield was a wall of waffle and a stream of generous platitudes to opponents. And all along you'd be waiting for a glimpse of the darkness behind this sunny façade. All along, the same fundamental question was hovering overhead: how could this nice man sitting here before us produce teams which could stoop so low? There was never a glimpse behind the curtain. He was a deep man who kept these public conversations shallow.

It should go without saying that the teams which won All-Irelands in 1987 and '88, and in '96 and '99, produced some of the best players of their generation. A few of them would rank with the best of any generation. They were backed up by a mixum-gatherum of good soldiers, hard grafters and a few mullockers who could barely kick the ball out of their way.

It was an outstanding managerial achievement to mould these jumbled collections of the great, the good and the average into such formidable machines. Boylan got far more out of some players than they knew they had in themselves. He had that special magic about him that could turn the key in a player's mind and get him to perform. Their testimonials to him in the documentary help to explain it.

Tommy Dowd says Boylan inspired him, filled him with confidence and self-confidence. Colm O'Rourke: "He made people feel good about themselves." Gerry McEntee: "When he was talking to you, you kind of felt you were the only person that mattered." Darren Fay: "I owed Seán Boylan a lot more than the two All-Ireland medals." Colm Coyle: "You hated to let him down."

But young men can be inspired into doing things that have consequences for others. There were casualties along the way, players from other teams who were left physically hurt or emotionally damaged because they felt cheated and deprived of justice. Other teams at the time had set their heart's desire on Leinster and All-Ireland titles too. It is one thing to be beaten fair and square, another thing altogether to feel that you were blackguarded out of it. The re-writing of history in a documentary, the whitewashing of inconvenient facts, is fresh salt in old wounds. The detail gets forgotten; the truth gets forgotten; the winners get to write the story.

"Seán would never say a bad thing about his players," says Joe Cassells in the film, "he would defend them to the hilt regardless of what went on. Or if people thought that the team went over the top - no, he would never."

This is not quite the compliment that Cassells perhaps thinks it is. Maybe Boylan shouldn't have defended them to the hilt. Maybe he should have drawn the line somewhere. If he could amp them up, he could calm them down too. If he could send them out to fight for every ball, maybe he could have sent them out not to fight in other ways.

John McDermott's hit on Peter Canavan in the 1996 All-Ireland semi-final summed up what people nationwide felt about Meath in those years. The country had been looking at them for a decade at that stage. They knew what they were seeing. Here was Canavan, the brilliant forward and main danger man for Tyrone, getting nailed by a late, head high bang that left him injured for the rest of the match. It's there on YouTube still. Canavan was taken out that day.

Martin O'Connell had the misfortune to catch Ciarán McBride with a knee in the head the same afternoon, and the added misfortune to walk on Brian Dooher's head too. "I really feel for Tyrone," said Boylan afterwards. "It must be a great disappointment to them."

The years rolled by, the manager finished his second decade in the job and continued until he was finally nudged aside at the end of the 2005 season. The world had changed and his aura was fading. The year before, however, in the 2004 Leinster semi-final, there was one final reminder of the good old days when a Meath player saw Laois's Colm Parkinson on the ground and kicked him in the face.

Colm Coyle acknowledges in Seán that Meath being accused of "bordering on dirty or whatever" was "very hard to reconcile with the man."

It was, and it still is.

Sunday Indo Sport

lukin wrote: »

Look, to say the Meath teams managed by Sean Boylan were cynical is hardly a mind-blowing revelation.
It's generally accepted by everyone that they were. If the black card existed in those days Meath would probably finish every game with no players.
His teams also contained some of the finest footballers to ever grace the game (Robbie O Malley, Bernard Flynn, Brian Stafford just to name a few).

And Tipp Hell kitchen in 60s, Heffernans Dublin culminating in 83 horrorshow final, Galway hurling team were tough so were Tipp 89 semi final 3 sent off Sylvie linnane etc. Meath werent the only tough team every sucessful team was tough Meath were given bad name it stuck.

All the top teams had and have a bit of dog in them, going close to the edge. I seen a video on Twitter last night of some heavy hitting in a Kerry Cork game from the 70's or early 80's serious stuff now.

If you think of any team over the last few decades with sustained success they had players in the team with a reputation they may not have deserved. Off the top of my head I'm thinking Francie Bellew, Paul Galvin, Ryan McMenamin Jesus even Johnny Cooper has a bit of it and the Dubs never need to get too dirty!

Brolly's article a page over from this one actually talks about leaders on great teams being "pigs". Conlon's article brings none of that balance, even though myself and seemingly a lot of other people haven't "actually read it" :rolleyes: