Seán Boylan knew this day would come, when the question about his future had real meaning, writes Ian O'Riordan.
Can there be anything more to offer after these past 21 years, and how many ways are there left to recreate a winning formula?
But the moment of defeat is not the time to answer it. For a manager who has done so much for the one county, that is the least of his entitlements.
"Well, I'd never think of myself on a day like today," he says. "That's not being coy. But there are 30 lads in there, and they have given so much to Colm Brady and Eamonn O'Brien and myself. It just didn't work out for us today. But I suppose we'll all have to put our considering cap on."
Yet there is something in the tone of voice that hints at times changing, that the future might already be a thing of the past.
"Well, we've a lot of lads there who have been tremendous servants to the game. And with a bit of luck they'll be around for another few years. And I hope things go really well for them."
Not that Boylan has to make any excuses on the day. Fermanagh set the whole field alight in the second half, and there was little any team could have done about it.
"It wasn't that we weren't trying," he added. "The lads were trying their best. But things weren't going right. And we'd no luck either. It was just a devastating display by Fermanagh in the second half.
"We thought at half-time that we had a chance, but the first few chances we got in the second half we weren't able to put them away. They got the goal and just changed the game. From then on there was no way they were going to let us have the ball."
Clearly, though, the culmination of games over the past few weeks had started to take their toll on the Meath team.
"I won't take anything away from Fermanagh's performance. But I know it did have an effect on us. Even the matches we lost this year I thought we'd played quite well. So it's hard to get it right all the time.
"Maybe some of the things we did in the second half weren't the most intelligent, but that's what happens when you're under pressure. And we didn't cope with it well on the day."
