Boylan always an alternative practitioner

Meath v Wicklow: Most people gave up trying to figure out Seán Boylan a long time ago. What it is that, after 22 years, keeps driving him to put so much into Meath football? Why will he take a team to Croke Park tomorrow and somehow believe deep down he can have them back there in late September. When will he ever see some sense?

What we do know is he's not the same manager as in the season of 1983. Boylan has been reinvented, evolved, gone beyond comparison.
He's become a philosophy, that success is not always an end product. The path, the process, is what regenerates him.

We can find clues in his build-up to championship season number 23. The way he took his panel on a trip to the mountains outside of
Prague for something different. The way he's sticking with the old and trying out the new.

And we can get further evidence from someone who first worked with him as a player, and now as a selector.

David Beggy was asked to come on board even before Boylan was certain he'd get another term. He'd been in regular contact with his old
manager since his days as the explosive wing forward on Meath's All-Ireland winning teams of 1987 and 1988.

Beggy's recent success with the junior club St Vincent's in Ardcath had caught Boylan's attention and the deal required little more than
a handshake.

"I'd just been chatting to him," says Beggy, "and saying that I was thinking of going to a senior club this year. Just after that he approached me and asked if I wanted to get involved with his team.

"And that was an honour you couldn't turn down. I did have to think about the family commitments but these things don't come along too often. It's been a real challenge, but it's great, and I've been really enjoying it. I mean you do have to learn quickly with Seán."Part of that learning process involved getting to know exactly how Boylan operates as a manager. There are some things the players don't need to know. Beggy walked to the other side of the fence and found an even better view. Therewas no dwindling of the old maestro's spirit.

Defeat to Fermanagh last year had merely rekindled it.

"One of the reasons I got involved was from talking to him last year, and how disappointed he was with the way it ended. Once he got the nod to go again he was so enthusiastic, and from the conversations we had I knew he still wanted to win.

"So I've been convinced of that, and if I had sensed any dwindling of his spirit, that he was doing it for the sake of it or going through the motions, there'd have been no point in getting involved."Beggy half expected to be handed the Boylan Book of Tricks, but what he got instead was close
consultation on new ideas.

Along with the second selector, Declan Mullen, every player became a work in progress. And Boylan never once claimed to know best. "He's been completely the opposite of that. He's always looking for new ideas, anything that might work. His mind is wide open to progression. He's not using the methods of 1983 or 1987 or 1991 or 1996. He has progressed and
taken the good of all the new techniques that are involved now, and rejected what he feels are the bad.

"And he's developed teams, too, to play different styles down through the years, and that shows a man that allows his formula to change. Some of the managers that have been there a long time use the same patterns, the same pre-season stuff and that. He'll look at the team he has and change his formula to suit the needs. And that's a great talent."They're working with a Meath panel now that would still be the envy of most managers in the
country. Beggy is at ease when saying the best 15 players available to them will play tomorrow against Wicklow.

And it's a familiar blend, Darren Fay at full back, Nigel Crawford at midfield, Trevor Giles at wing forward. Other tried and tested figures
lie in wait, Ollie Murphy, Richie Kealy, John Cullinane and David Crimmins.

The injection of youth comes with Stephen MacGabhann at wing back. Joe Sheridan probably would have made it if he wasn't suspended and
Brian Farrell is just shy of his first start, two players of undisputed scoring ability.

"We'd be more than happy with the way these 15 are going," adds Beggy, "so they all deserve their start. Some of them have been around for a
while, are maybe 26 now or 27, but I still don't think that's too old in football terms. There's an impression out that you're nearly finished at
21 these days. I don't believe that, not if the hunger is still there. Just look at someone like Kevin Walsh in Galway."

Dealing with county players as opposed to being one sounds simple enough in theory. Beggy never quite realised the height of the responsibility,
nor the thought that goes into it: "Well as a player you think only about yourself on the day of the match. From a selector's side of things
it's you that's making the big decision about the players, about their futures really.

"And I've seen how Seán would analyse things an awful lot. That's something that as a player you mightn't have had a great grasp of.

"And he does put an awful lot of thought into it. And as a selector that's been fantastic. Our team selections can go on for hours. It's very
clinical, and there really is no stone left unturned. Everything that's done is done with a purpose."

If anyone knows how one season can make a player then it's Beggy. Just a year after joining the Meath senior panel he had his first All-Ireland
medal and his first All Star (he won a second All Star in 1990). The player next to him at centre forward, Joe Cassells, had been around for the previous decade and won nothing.

Beggy knows about longevity too, playing up to 1995 before the dreaded knee cruciate ligament injury forced him into retirement. The landscape
of Leinster football has changed in the years since and more recently still has the reputation of Meath, once deemed the team only fools write
off.

"Yeah, but that's because Meath haven't been as successful as they wanted to be in recent years. I think the reputation has been fading, and it's
up to the players wearing the Meath jerseys at the moment to regain it.

"I feel there's been a good buzz in the team for the last few weeks. But I know myself from my playing days that you just don't know until you
get out on the pitch. And the first round of the championship is always a difficult one. Wicklow will see this as their biggest game of the year,
as big as their All-Ireland."

So goes Meath's championship build-up. Some freak league results leaving them relegated but their hunger none the worse. A reputation that
needs some restoring. And Boylan on the sideline, starting all over again.