Although it was too public and vivid an occasion to carry the same sense of foreboding, the weekend's Leinster football final brought to mind High Plains Drifter, the Clint Eastwood film about a mysterious stranger coming to town. It gradually becomes apparent that he is there to avenge traumatic events from the town's shadowy past, events in which the townspeople may have been complicit, writes Sean Moran.

An earnest young lawman had made himself vexatious to powerful interests and was disposed of by hired killers: "Bull-whipped to death. Dangdest thing I ever saw," was - roughly - the account of his gruesome end.

Now the serial misfortune and indignities suffered by Tom Carr, the former Dublin manager, bad and all as they were wouldn't have added up to as alarming a fate as that. Nonetheless what we have seen in the past month looks like tailor-made revenge for what the county suffered throughout Carr's earnest term of office. Of course Tommy Lyons isn't an exact fit either as a mysterious stranger with little to say, whom the locals have never seen before.

Whatever about such minor details, the rest is eerily similar. A year ago in the Leinster final, Dublin's manic second-half assault on Meath's goal failed to yield the scores necessary to overturn a deficit incurred in the opening minutes when goalkeeper David Byrne failed to hold a ball and Meath's full forward Graham Geraghty fisted it into the net.

Less than a year later Dublin beat Meath and, thanks to two goalkeeping errors, full forward Ray Cosgrove scores goals by fisting to the net.

Two years ago (and one presumes Carr hears the bullwhip cracking - kerrrack! - every time he sees this being replayed) a commanding half-time lead in the Leinster final replay against Kildare was wiped out by the concession of two goals in little over a minute on the restart. Last Sunday a queasy period for Dublin was transformed by scoring two goals in little under a minute and the Leinster trophy now resides in Parnell Park for the first time in seven years.

It's likely that whenever Carr hears that bullwhip, the image of county chairman John Bailey springs to his mind. In the aftermath of the All-Ireland quarter-final defeat by Kerry (kerrrack!), Bailey pledged his support to Carr's desire for a further, fifth, year's appointment. Despite this and other public pledges, the county chairman voted to get rid of Carr little over a month later.

There's nothing in the unfolding screenplay to suggest that this shoddy treatment of the county manager is about to be avenged - although the ongoing Senate count will reveal whether Bailey's arduous trek around the countryside to visit sundry, ummm, pillars of local democracy has yielded him a seat in the Upper House.

In a fit of exuberance after last month's defeat of Meath, Bailey did remind a journalist that criticism of his stance on the manager issue last autumn now looked pretty silly. That was a bit of a hostage to fortune. As the journalist responded, the criticism hadn't been of the decision but the way it was implemented. In other words it was a perfectly respectable argument to contend that after four years in charge, Carr had taken the team as far as he could and that it was time for change.

But in those circumstances it was hardly necessary to score a soundtrack to events on the basis of how supportive the county chairman was - when he in fact had come to a similar conclusion.

Nonetheless Bailey and others involved deserve credit for recruiting Lyons. The latter's exuberance and proven talent for team building marked him out as an obvious choice. He has the priceless asset in management terms of devising his game plan, finding the players to implement it and sticking to his guns. If the plan is a disaster, his spell as manager won't be lengthy. But with Lyons it has always brought improvement and that substance has been delivered in some style.

That ability to freshen a situation and develop it in his own inimitable style has served Lyons' own club Kilmacud Crokes and Offaly well. Bailey and the Dublin board were right to recognise that fact.

But of course this wasn't the first time that Tommy Lyons' talents might have been useful to Dublin. Sunday's Leinster title was the county's first since 1995 when the All-Ireland was added in September. Shortly afterwards Pat O'Neill and his selectors stepped down, as most of them had been involved for five arduous years. Therefore a vacancy existed that autumn.

Only seven months previously Lyons had managed Kilmacud to the All-Ireland club championship. It was a triumph of team architecture given that the players available did not feature any outstanding individuals (although the failure to select any of them for Dublin's championship team rankled a bit in Stillorgan) but as a unit and in their ability to rise to the occasion they were a formidable and intelligent outfit.

Ideal credentials you'd imagine to take over the county team. Although appearing initially disposed towards the idea, however, Bailey decided in the end to go for Mickey Whelan who, despite a respected coaching pedigree and impressive CV, hadn't been operating at Lyons' level for a while.

Whelan's tenure wasn't successful. Within a year both titles were gone. Meath overturned the 10-point defeat of 1995 to win by two 12 months later. In what looked like vivid reproach, Lyons took the Offaly job and led the county to a first Leinster title in 15 years and a first ever National League.

The 1996 All-Ireland title was winnable. Lyons was brimful of enthusiasm for the task of winning it. Last year he dismissed the notion that not becoming Dublin manager back then had been a disappointment to him and said that everything had turned out for the best. He wasn't always so sanguine about those events.

I met him at a Christmas function in 1995 and he bubbled on about knowing exactly the Dublin team that would win three-in-a-row All-Irelands and how he would go about it. Behind the engaging chat, there was no mistaking his sense of grievance at not being appointed.

But there was a prototype High Plains Drifter moment to come two years later. In November 1997 after a league match in Parnell Park, which had seen Lyons' Offaly comprehensively defeat Dublin, the home crowd vented their spleen on the Dublin manager. An hour or so later the news emerged that Mickey Whelan - for whom Lyons had been passed over - had taken the unusually drastic action in GAA terms of resigning mid-league.

Kerrrack