HE first strays into the public domain in 1973. Seneschalstown have just won a county title and into one of, the presentation photographs a cheeky and assertive 10 year old has thrust his face - "a real bold face", according to Meath PRO Brendan Cummins, who published the picture 21 years later when the club next won the championship because by that stage the young interloper was training the team.

It would be stretching things to suggest that the incident was in some way emblematic of Colm Coyle but throughout his inter county career there has been something of the bold boy about him. Cummins sums up the twin blights of Coyle's career as "versatility and volatility".

The versatility we shall come to but the volatility led him into frequent scrapes with officialdom. Coyle's transgressions weren't so much the calculated evil of hardened offenders but the hot headed wild stuff that left people shaking theirs heads as he trudged off. It happened quite a lot and may have even cost Meath the Leinster final in 1989.

"He was volatile," says Cummins. "Generally he was punished fairly and squarely. You couldn't say it wasn't deserved." In the words of long serving Meath manager Sean Boylan: "I can tell you it wasn't great watching it from the sideline". Matt Kerrigan, who coached Coyle at both minor and under 21, says: "He would have been impetuous".

Controversy didn't stop there. In 1987, after he had left for the US, Meath reached the All Ireland stages and the call went out for his return. Caught between the inconvenience of returning for the couple of months and the less than enthusiastic welcome from those whose place on the team he might take, Coyle nonetheless came home.

"I had planned to stay two years," he says, "but the phone calls started coming" across the Atlantic. People were asking me - I mean you can't decide yourself that you're going to come home and walk straight onto a team. Some people felt threatened and there was ill feeling for a year or two. But Sean called me because he wanted a stronger panel."

The difficulty of being so versatile a player also had an impact on his inter county career. Able to play in attack or defence, he began to find himself being regarded as top class cover rather than a starting candidate. "I began at half back but at the time, the team had a lot of backs but no forwards. We got some good forwards and I was edged out of attack but by then, the defence was settled. It was handier to have me on the bench." Coyle featured in both the All Ireland victories as a substitute although he held his place for the 1988 replay.

How he journeyed through this turbulent stage to outlast so many contemporaries and become one of the two - with Martin O'Connell elder statesman on a young Meath team on the verge of a breakthrough is a fairly improbable story to those whose perception of Coyle hasn't moved with the times.

The perception also overlooks the status of Coyle within Meath. Brendan Cummins estimates that he is the best club footballer in the county whereas Kerrigan insists on the following testimony: "From 1986 up to now, if you were to pick the top five footballers in Meath, he'd be one."

"He's a huge influence on the squad at the moment. He's not trying to puts in as much as others, if not more. He's quiet and not dictatorial, says Boylan whose 13 years in charge of Meath snugly coincides with Coyle's inter county career. The player himself admits that playing with such an enthusiastic young team has "recharged" him.

"He is so committed," says Matt Kerrigan, "and that commitment to playing from trap to line got him into trouble but it was always part of his game, even as a minor. As an under age player, he rarely came to the referee's attention even though he was so aggressive. I think it was because he was quite small. He played centre back against Kerry in an All Ireland semi final - I think on Tom Spillane - and he played very, very well."

Coyle's laconic comment on first viewing his marker: "He looks very tall".

The commitment was also to the game itself. During the mid1980s, Coyle played soccer for Drogheda United and, according to Boylan, impressed then manager Ray Treacy. "Himself and Mattie McCabe (a contemporary on the Meath team) both played. Mattie had all the skills but Coyle was very competitive.

When it came to making up his mind, Coyle's background made the decision a straightforward one. His father had played for Donegal before moving to Meath and his mother's family had GAA connections in Clare.

Tomorrow's Leinster final is the sternest test of Meath's new credentials. With a good crop of under age talent coming through for the last couple of years, the future has to stop being promising and just arrive. Positioned with a novel consistency at right wing back, Coyle will be expected to bring to the match all the discipline and responsibility "I'm just not getting caught," he says as humour slips past tact that has started to characterise his game.

"It's a completely different set up, younger and more enthusiastic," he says. "And I've always preferred playing number five although I might have been used there to better effect when I was younger.

In relation to the new found discipline, he finds the subject a bit tedious. This always comes up with reporters. Referees get influenced by reputations and talk that surrounds a player. I'm not saying I was always hard done by but it happened. I've mellowed a "bit, lengthened the fuse and I'm not getting into as much trouble. I suppose whichever way you look at it, a lot of people are saying I'm," playing better stuff.

"Part of it is that I'm not surrounded by bigger names anymore which used to mean I wasn't as noticeable. I'm more, settled now in defence and it's easier, I'm able to concentrate on, a defensive game. If you play in the half forwards for three or four matches, you tend to be loose when you move back."

Trying to locate precise dates for the rebirth of Colm Coyle is difficult but a two year framework does most of the explaining. In 1994, with Meath's grip on Leinster slipping, one of the ploys for that years Leinster final was to play Coyle in the corner against Dessie Farrell.

The idea had its sceptics. The Meathman's tendency to foul would be costly that close to goal. In the event, although Dublin won, he played quite well and those who had praised his reliability were vindicated.

A year later, he moved onto Jason Sherlock who had been surprisingly named at full forward for Dublin. Whereas he didn't eliminate Sherlock's influence, Coyle certainly limited it without conceding astronomical amounts of frees.

Word of his rehabilitation was spreading but in between these two matches came another pointer to qualities little suspected of him by the wider world. As player coach, he led his club Seneschalstown to a county title and from there to the Leinster final where they narrowly lost to the eventual All Ireland champions, Kilmacud Crokes.

Matt Kerrigan acted as adviser for much of that campaign and feels that Coyle played some of the best football of his career at that time. Playing at centre back, he held the team together and conducted its momentum. To those who knew him, however, this achievement didn't come out of the blue.

"He's always thought about it," says Boylan. He's always had a great football brain. I'll never forget 1986. Pat Spillane was a unanimous All Star that year and hardly got a kick of the ball. But Colm didn't even get a nomination."

"He's a good talker" says Kerrigan. Like a lot of footballers, you see him in Croke Park and get a certain impression that's far removed from the fellas you'd meet in the street. He's a good conversationalist and can talk about the game - and anything else and has a wry sense of humour."

Coyle believes the experience helped him. "At the end of the day, when you're coaching a team, the buck stops with you. You have to set an example and be more responsible. With Seneschalstown, I was deciding tactics and I think I do contribute more now at county level. I've got mature in a football sense. I see a lot of young lads coming in good footballers but they end up going off the rails. It's my job and Martin's to make them aware of what's needed to win."

The hope is that the acquisition of all this responsibility hasn't killed the spark of irreverence that has made him such a confident player through a long and at times difficult career. Sean Boylan says this is his last word on the matter.

"We were playing Kerry in the league down in Tralee. We struggled and Hayes or McEntee went down. Coyle was wing back and I was saying to him: `Jacko (O'Shea) is a most gallant man. Up and down the pitch. Would you be able to work at staying with him?' So Coyler says, it'll be a change for him to have to follow someone else. That sums it up. Confidence, arrogance . . . I don't know what you'd call it."

A bold face to the world.