Seán Moran on how the Royals, in a fixture where form is irrelevant, have managed to keep Dublin down for most of the last two decades

It is fitting that the new Croke Park opens for business tomorrow with a showing of Dublin-Meath, the 2002 cut. No rivalry has been more closely associated with the stadium over the past 20 years. For all but four of those years the Leinster championship has ended up in either Dublin or Meath, with the counties sharing the spoils eight each.

Tomorrow's Bank of Ireland Leinster football semi-final sees Meath in their 21st season under manager Seán Boylan. In that time he will have pitted his wits against eight different Dublin management teams - including Tommy Lyons this weekend.

Only two, Kevin Heffernan's from 1982-85 and Pat O'Neill's from 1993-95, bettered him. And it could be argued in Boylan's defence that during the former period he was only learning the management game.

The management teams of the early 1990s all consisted of players from Kevin Heffernan's managerial hey-day. They admitted to being at a loss as to why their players were so inhibited by the prospect of playing Meath and yet so confident about playing Kildare. For the management it was the other way around.

None of them could ever remember losing a championship match to Meath, whereas Kildare manager Mick O'Dwyer had been in charge of the Kerry teams that had administered some painful defeats to Dublin in the 1970s.

Jim Brogan was a selector with both Cullen and O'Neill. He thinks "apprehensive" is a bit too strong a word.

"Well I think we were more challenged by O'Dwyer. It's easy to forget that there were no Meath men around who had played on a winning team against Dublin in Boylan's early years. When his first teams played Heffernan's, they didn't win either.

"Guys like (Colm) O'Rourke and (Gerry) McEntee had never done it and there was hardly anyone even in the folk memory who had beaten Dublin."

That had emphatically changed by the early 1990s. Meath were All-Ireland contenders as perennially as Dublin had been. The county's breakthrough against Dublin came in 1986, a year when Brian Mullins, Seán Doherty and Tony Hempenstall formed a triumvirate of selectors. That July Meath won a first Leinster title in 16 years.

Dublin had excuses. The rain had hit them harder than it had Meath. Scorer-in-chief Barney Rock had broken his collarbone during the match. But a year later and under the new management of Gerry McCaul, Dublin were back with a National League title and high hopes. Again they were dashed.

Frank Foley, brother of Kevin, was a Meath panellist in the 1980s and a selector with Seán Boylan for the All-Ireland wins of 1996 and 1999. He says that those early wins over Dublin were vital in the development of the team's self-confidence.

"I knew from the dressing-room how important it was. I remember Colm O'Rourke telling us that Dublin would have no concept that a Meath team might beat them. We were expected to put up a valiant show and that was that. Even when we started winning, the Dublin game was always the one at the back of your mind. It was always inevitable that Dublin and Meath were going to meet."

McCaul registered one win, in the Leinster final of 1989, but had the misfortune to run into Meath at the very zenith of their success. There was already considerable "background" to the fixture by the time Paddy Cullen, in his first year as manager, found himself in charge for the four-match epic first round encounter of 1991.

That remarkable series with its huge crowds and climactic finish set the scene for a further decade's rivalry. Pat O'Neill became manager in 1992. He and one of his management team, Jim Brogan, had been selectors with Cullen. They had unprecedented success in this fixture, winning it in three successive years, culminating in the biggest win for either county since the 1950s - the Leinster final of 1995.

"Most GAA managers tend to be self-effacing," says Brogan, "talking up the opposition. Pat was different before that match. He told everyone that he had never played for or managed a team that lost to Meath - the sort of stuff you might say in the dressing-room on the day. You'd seldom see a manager as gung-ho as he was before that final.

"But there was still great value attached to beating Meath. Even during that final I remember it being deadlocked and thinking the next score's going to win this. It was actually Meath who got it but once (Paul) Clarke got the goal, it was all one-way after that."

Some saw that victory, and the subsequent All-Ireland title, as being so significant that it would take Meath a couple of years to recover. But the metabolism of this fixture is unpredictable. A year later Dublin were under new management. Both of Mickey Whelan's championships ended at the hands of Meath. It was Frank Foley's first Leinster final as a selector.

"In 1996 I remember people talking about Vinnie Murphy saying '10 points lads, 10 points' (the margin of victory in 1995). It was a big motivation. We got to the Leinster final almost unexpectedly, from nowhere. The talk was 'well, we don't think you'll beat them this time'. We had something like four 19-year-olds on the team. There were no great expectations.

"Mickey Whelan was after taking over and there were stories that they weren't settled. There wasn't much pressure on us."

In recent years, with Meath back on the All-Ireland standard, Dublin have been playing second fiddle. During Tom Carr's four years managing Dublin, the heartaches came equally from Meath and a new predator on the scene, Kildare.

Although retrospect ordains that the form team wins the fixture, not every year's winners have been expected. Foley believes that uncertainty is built into the relationship.

"The thing about form in these matches is that you don't trust it. A team that's favourites believes that it'll be tight and a team that's underdogs know that they'll give it a right rattle. The formbook wouldn't have a lot of relevance."

That more than anything is a comfort to Tommy Lyons as he attempts to become only the second Dublin manager to pull off a first-year coup against Sean Boylan's Meath.