Although the entire Meath squad was numbed by last year's unexpected eclipse in the first hours of the Leinster championship, Darren Fay's dismay seemed of a deeper nature. The big man looked stricken, quietly distraught.

"I have never felt anything like it," he admitted in the half-lit corridors that run underneath Croke Park, just beginning to fill with the whoops of the Offaly players. "I am totally dejected at this point in time."

Those who have observed Fay on the winning days - and he has known many since his spectacular elevation to the senior ranks in 1996 - will testify that he is possessed of a singular dignity when it comes to post-match situations. He is reserved, measured and devoutly modest in his assessment and essentially private in his joy. Indeed, his demeanour does not differ greatly from those rare, freakish days when Meath fail to deliver. The post-Offaly comments were a lapse, tantamount to a confession.

"Darren gets very withdrawn after a game, even after a win," says John Andrews, the coach at Fay's club in Trim. "He tends to get totally immersed in the build-up to the games and naturally needs a certain amount of time to come down from that. He recently told me that he gets more nervous before club games than before the big summer matches that Meath are involved in because so much is expected of him at club level."

Fay's predominance in Meath's nerveless dismantling of Kildare in this year's Leinster semi-final was an ominous sign for others with All-Ireland ambitions. Recent history indicates that when the full back is on his game, Meath thrive. That trend was initiated with his debut season in 1996, which he finished with an All-Ireland medal, an All Star and the Young Player of the Year award. A summer later, when he was absent for the Leinster final, the vaunted Meath rearguard had no discernible anchor and simply unravelled as Offaly speed merchant Roy Malone shredded them for two goals.

A temporary dip in form a year later coincided with a second successive Leinster final loss, this time to Kildare. But in 1999, when Meath ground all-comers into submission throughout a laboured, colourless championship, Fay was again eminent, one of the core trinity along with Trevor Giles and John McDermott and an All Star again. He was still only 23.

Such is his stature that he has already been heralded as the full back of his generation, a natural heir to Meath's former sentry, Mick Lyons. But the comparison holds true in reputation only. While the most striking aspect of Fay is his physique - athletic and intimidating - it is not his primary attribute.

"Darren is essentially a ball-player. People forget that he has blinding pace. And he isn't a traditional full back who just catches and hoofs the ball clear," notes Andrews. "He is comfortable in possession and generally distributes cleverly. "If there has been a recurrent criticism levelled at the Trim man, it has been that he has shown signs of hesitancy when forced to abandon his patrol at the edge of the square. In the 1999 semi-final, John McEntee of Armagh took him roaming around Croke Park and the adventure appeared to leave both Fay and his team-mates a bit queasy.

Fay has become something of a totem pole to his colleagues so his absence from the accustomed anchor position invites a certain vulnerability.

"You take responsibility for your man, that's it. I'm playing beside Darren Fay, a super full back, and while he moves around a bit, I try to stay out of his way," was Mark O'Reilly's assessment of life alongside him. Fay and Meath eventually got to grips with the Armagh tactics and by the end of the match, he was as imposing as ever.

"Ah, I didn't mind it, though I must practise my shooting a bit. I decided I'd go with my man until I was told otherwise," he reflected afterwards. It is hard to uncover an encounter in which Fay was comprehensively bettered. In the 1999 provincial showpiece, Dublin's Ian Robertson - his likely adversary tomorrow - looked to have verve enough to cause him serious trouble but that threat was gradually extinguished with predictable results.

The past seasons are a roll call of high-flying reputations going home with blank sheets after an afternoon in the company of Fay. No side has yet invented a way of leaving him fully exposed. There have been moments - when Brian Murphy linked with Martin Lynch for Kildare's crucial goal against the Royals in 1998, Fay was seen to be hovering in no man's land. But those are just isolated passages.

"Various teams have attempted to bring him out the field but I think that only works in that they can try to exploit the space he leaves. The player Darren is marking generally won't profit," reckons Andrews.

"We play him at centrefield in the club championship and the guy is just thriving, totally overshadowing those he came up against. He can take a score, is useful with a dead ball. He really is a terrific player."

Fay, of course, has pedigree. His father Jimmy kept goal for Meath for six years, calling it quits just as the county was on the verge of a great era that has been more or less continuous. Fay carries patchy memories of his father's last season in 1984, when Meath won the Centenary Cup and celebrated it truly. He spent the night chasing autographs in the Burlington.

But from his childhood, he was accustomed to spending time with the Meath cognoscenti. Seβn Boylan called regularly to the house, Mick Lyons was a family friend. And Fay's athleticism was not a subtle thing. His promise burned from an early age.

"I think we had him playing with Trim seniors when he was 17," says Andrews. A centre back on the Meath minor side that lost the 1993 All-Ireland final, he was on the bench two years later when Dublin famously tore Meath to sunders in the last 10 minutes of the Leinster final. They went on to claim the All-Ireland while Meath retreated and returned a leaner, more resilient and cocksure young side.

The raw, uncompromising edge evident in that 1996 All-Ireland series, most prominently against Tyrone and Mayo in the latter stages, tainted the victory to a degree. The skirmish against Mayo in the All-Ireland final replay established itself as one of the most notorious episodes in All-Ireland final history.

"What can you say about it except that it happened," Fay said on these pages later on. "Thirty seconds in 140 minutes of football. "Although the Meath backs have at times appeared beyond breach, their style has, over time, been subject to less than flattering analyses. Meath's philosophy is not for all palates. Yet while Fay is part of that defence, he is beyond such reproach. His style is nimble and crisp. But he is not about to apologise for what Meath football is. When they avenged the 1997 loss to Offaly a year later, there were complaints that Meath had nullified the overlapping attack of their opponents through body-checking.

"I know that there were people on the radio after that game all right," Fay said later that summer. "If those things are said, it doesn't bother me. Meath don't set out to hurt or injure anyone, we just go out playing our own game, trying to win."

And it is a formula which regularly, almost monotonously, works. Meath are low-key in victory and fascinating on those rare days of defeat. Humble, their manager generous in his praise and all of them learning, imbibing the hurt.

They are a hard bunch to read, probably because they have sights on a higher plane of ambition that most of us can comprehend. In the summer of 1998, Fay told this newspaper: "Being honest, I'd say I want to win about three All-Ireland medals before I leave the game."

And it sounded neither foolish nor vainglorious as he said it, simply achievable. The following summer he picked up his second All-Ireland championship and now, not many would bet against him earning his third. And it could be contended that he has yet to reach his peak. If Kerry follow up on last year's dominance and continue to deploy Seamus Moynihan at full back, it ought to be a summer of classic full-back stealth. In Fay's absence last year, the uncanny Glenflesk man almost redefined the nature of the role when drafted in to cover for the injured Barry O'Shea.

Such was his influence that the selectors seem loath to return him to his nominal half-back role. If Fay cared for accolades, he might feel as if he had a point to prove this year.

"The thing about Darren is that he never goes on about himself. He is just the same person, day in day out," says John Andrews. "Takes his game seriously. He might have had a few pints the night they beat Kildare and that would have been it. He hangs around with the same lads in Trim he has known all his life and helps me out with coaching the senior team. He knows what it is to play for Meath but he doesn't make anything out of it or of himself. He's kind of relaxed about the whole thing."

But it is a Meath kind of relaxed - alert, hungry, prowling.