When Meath youth beat Tyrone's art

Keith Dugganon the 1996 All-Ireland semi-final clash between Meath and Tyrone, who meet again today

In 1996, the football world was different. Tyrone were a flickering football force still searching for a maiden All-Ireland title under the divining rod of Art McRory.

And Meath? It was in the autumn of the previous year the former Liverpool defensive specialist Alan Hansen said dismissively of the fresh-cheeked first team that Alex Ferguson had assembled at Old Trafford: "You don't win anything with kids."

Seán Boylan thought differently. When the counties clashed in that year's All-Ireland semi-final, Meath had already defied and delighted local expectations by reclaiming the Leinster title, a stunning reversal of fortune from the 10-point drubbing they received from Dublin a summer earlier. But that was only the beginning.

Late that September, Meath were All-Ireland champions for the first time since 1988 after coming out tops in a tempestuous and controversial two-game struggle with Mayo. It may not have been Meath's most popular victory but it might have been the most remarkable of Boylan's achievements. He had six 19-year-olds on the panel that year and four of those - Mark O'Reilly, Darren Fay, Paddy Reynolds and Barry Callaghan - played on the starting team.

Another teenager, Ollie Murphy, was destined to become the marque forward in the game three years later.

In retrospect, it was a remarkable team, containing a half-forward line of Trevor Giles, Tommy Dowd and Graham Geraghty and an ascendant John McDermott at midfield. That season, though, they were unproven as a unit and Tyrone had cruised to a second consecutive Ulster championship, beating what was still a heavyweight Down team 1-9 to 0-9 in the final.

They still had an axe to grind over their one-point loss to Dublin the previous September.

"Maybe we were caught a bit by surprise," mused Chris Lawn, who played in the full-back line for the northern champions that season.

"There was nothing about our preparation that was lacking. We had played very comfortably in Ulster and we believed we had been battle-hardened and all the rest of it by what happened the year before. Our impression of Meath was this was a young team and they were blooding a fair few players for the years ahead."

Before the 1995 Leinster final, Boylan had arranged a challenge match against Tyrone in Irvinestown. It was one of those mid-summer, dead air challenges with no audience other than the midges and at the end, the scoreboard read like something from the Tokyo stock exchange.

"It was the mother and father of a hiding," Boylan remembered this week, "and we knew going down the road that evening that we had serious problems ahead of us in the Leinster final."

A fortnight later, they took their medicine in front of a gleeful Dublin house and headed back up the N3 brooding. Unsurprisingly, the last of the 1980s gang - Colm O'Rourke, Brian Stafford and Bernard Flynn bowed out. Two stayed: Martin O'Connell and Colm Coyle.

At training that January, both senior men privately expressed their pleasure and surprise at the intensity and the boldness with which the younger lads were playing. They reckoned there might be something in the season. Meath's path through Leinster was predictable. They put up 24 points against Carlow and the semi-final was completely overshadowed by a house fire tragedy involving the family of one of the Laois players, Colm Maher.

And even though the Dublin football team had had a turbulent nine months as champions, the 0-10 to 0-8 Meath win was still a big turnaround.

Coyle was the dominant player on the field that day.

"The thing about Colm Coyle is that he was a tremendous reader of the game," Boylan says. "In the Leinster final, Charlie Redmond was still one of the most dangerous forwards in the game and Coyler just took up a position about 20 metres in front of where Charlie and Mark O'Reilly were.

"And for the first 20 minutes, he never ran 20 yards and he seemed to get every ball. He was superb.

"When the match was over, it was discovered there was something wrong with Coyler's knee. It turned out an operation he had some years previously had left a residue of material. If it was operated on, there is no way he could have played in the semi-final. So he decided to leave it.

"But he did no training between the Leinster final and that Tyrone game. And he didn't have a great game by his standards. But the thing was that because he was so good in the semi-final, Tyrone kept the ball away from him and he was able to come through the game without the injury compromising him."

THE RECORDS SHOW that Meath beat Tyrone by 2-15 to 0-12. Geraghty scored a goal and made another for Callaghan.

Barracked the year before for missing two frees against Dublin, Giles had returned as an extraordinary player, cerebral and unflappable, ice to Geraghty's fire. Although young, they were no respecters of reputation.

A tough game passed into legend when Tyrone's Brian Dooher and Peter Canavan received treatment for head cuts and returned wearing spectacular tourniquets which transformed the second half into something out of Oliver Stone's Platoon.

"It was a tough game," agrees Boylan. "Now, as far as I know, Tyrone had a new doctor on the day and it looked like a World War Two job. Which is not to disrespect the doctor at all. But it did look terrible. Normally, a guy would go off and get stitches. And all sorts of things were written that the Meath plan was to take out Peter Canavan. Nothing could have been further from the truth," he says fiercely. "Nothing."

Tyrone did not crib about the nature of the defeat although Canavan would later say it took him the bones of a year to recover from that game.

"Peter was a broken man coming off that field in more ways than one," says Lawn. "It took him a long time to get over the injuries he picked up that season. Meath tackled us hard and they also played some great, direct football against us. Those long diagonal balls into the box kept our defence busy - and I would expect more of the same in the match this weekend.

"But people often forget that we were still in that match right up until the end - McBride (Ciarán) hit the crossbar with a goal chance and then I think they went up the other end and got one. It was tight most of the way through. Losing it was a huge blow. I have always maintained that losing that semi-final was a worse feeling than losing the final the year before. Because we had come through that and felt we had learned from it and we knew what we were capable of.

"So that game was a serious setback. Around that time, there were a fair number of us in our mid to late 20s and boys were thinking of finishing up."

Geraghty was taken off a few minutes before the end that day and, in scenes that presaged what happened in Portlaoise three weeks ago, he was the subject of adulation from the Meath faithful. Even then, there were no half measures when it came to Geraghty: he was regarded as either a god or a demon.

"Geraghty is a remarkable athlete," sighs Boylan. "But for someone who is so easy going in many ways, he is incredibly competitive at training and that can lead to all sorts of problems. Graham would go mad if he was just wasting his time in there. And if you want a mischief maker - if you tell Graham to go in and play full back, he will go and do it.

"And there have been controversies and storms and what not. But that is the way life goes. Some of the greatest players in other counties have had storms in their lives. Like in Portlaoise, it just amazed me what people were saying about Graham. They don't know the man at all."

Coyle carried his dodgy game into the All-Ireland final and, of course, had a remarkable impact on that September, scoring the weirdest of equalisers when his speculative punt forward bounced over the bar at the conclusion of the drawn game and walking to the line with Mayo's Liam McHale after the infamous fight which broke out two minutes into the replay.

The crude assertion afterwards was that Mayo had lost their best player and Meath their worst. McHale was unquestionably the key figure for Mayo that year but Boylan just smiles at the notion that Coyle was the man most easily written out of his plans.

"LISTEN. THERE WERE TWO men with two All-Ireland medals that day. Colm was one. He was a huge player for us that year. Colm had this attitude. Let's just say he would never have been one to doubt his own ability.

"I remember back in the league in 1987 we were playing Kerry and we had all sorts of injuries and I said, 'Coyler, how would you feel about marking Jacko'? And he just shrugged and said, 'ah, it will do him good to be running after someone else for a change'. And that was it. No fuss."

In both games, Meath came back from six points down and Brendan Reilly crafted an immortal, right-footed point to win the match 2-9 to 1-11. Meath were All-Ireland champions. What had been a remarkable duel was overshadowed by the fight, which Boylan describes now as "32 seconds of madness".

"There were only 23 frees in the entire game after that."

He kept his counsel during the bitter months afterwards and has been big enough to admit that Mayo ought to have won the first match.

"You think of all that John Maughan achieved, bringing Clare to a Munster title and then taking Mayo back to the All-Ireland. John had no luck. Mayo should have beaten Meath the first day and you need that bit of luck.

"It was the same with Tyrone and all of the years and good work that Art McRory put in and then Mickey Harte came in and things seemed to click."

It was the summer of 2002 when Tyrone got another shot at playing in Croke Park. By then, Geraghty had captained Meath to the 1999 championship and they lost the 2001 All-Ireland final to Galway. They were the last Leinster team to make it that far.

McRory had left the scene and returned with predictable results but Tyrone were caught out in the fourth-round qualifiers by Sligo in what was a stunning solo display by Eamon O'Hara.

That defeat facilitated the appointment of Harte and the evolution of a team that would set the standard over the next five years.

Lawn was still a vital squad member then, earning crucial playing minutes in the big games and enjoying a scene-stealing cameo in the All-Ireland final. Afterwards, he had stood in the Tyrone dressingroom too dazed to speak.

"After 1996, I suppose winning All-Irelands would have been a distant dream for Tyrone football players. All I knew was I wanted to keep going as long as I could but for the enjoyment rather than for what I might win.

"What happened in 2003 was fantastic but it wasn't why I had hung in there. Things were a lot different then than in the mid 1990s. It was a different game by then."

Canavan lifted the Sam Magure afterwards. When he won his second All-Ireland two years later, Brian Dooher was captain. Although doubtful for today's game, Dooher is the lone Tyrone survivor from the 1996 clash with Meath and has become an irreplaceable force of energy for the team. From the stands, thoughts of that half-forgotten semi-final may well cross his mind when he sees Colm Coyle marching the sideline in the company of Tommy Dowd.

On the field, Geraghty exudes the champion traits of class and menace and Darren Fay is once again approaching his best form. They are the last of the class of 1996.

"Those two wouldn't know when to quit," smiles Boylan.

Boylan will be in the stands today and will probably keep a close eye on his former protégés. They are at the place now where Martin O'Connell and Coyle stood just over 10 years ago. They bring a touch of irascibility and experience and the gold-carat credentials of medal holders to a young Meath team high on adventure and self-belief.

Before them stands a Tyrone team that has become a pillar of the modern game.

History has looped itself.

This may be the match of the championship.