Sean Boylan, fresh-faced and cheery as ever, bounded up the steps towards the dressing-room precinct. A herdish shuffle of journalists moves towards him. Good days and bad days, Boylan carries himself with a graciousness that is distinctive and welcome.

Hands reach out to shake Boylan's. He thanks everyone by name, shakes every hand.

"It looked for a long time as if neither of us was going to score at all," he says, hands on his head and affecting to be as gob-smacked as a lottery winner at having achieved his seventh Leinster title as Meath manager.

"I can't say it ever settled down properly, it was very frantic. I felt it was very fairly contested, both teams gave it everything and we got whatever luck was going on the day."

The modesty of his comments is staggering. He knows, because he is shrewder than almost any football man around, that his team had just dismantled Dublin clinically, that this was the football equivalent of a slapping around and his boys scarcely had to break sweat. Harsh truths, though, are for behind his dressing-room doors. Out here he is honey-mouthed.

"Against Dublin you're never happy till it's over. The goal didn't make a difference in that way. I mean that with respect, because they never know when to die. They picked up the injuries, they lost Dessie and Brian Stynes towards the end, and these things don't help your cause at all."

It is tempting to ask if other things detracted from Dublin's cause, like keeping a struggling Peadar Andrews on Ollie Murphy until Murphy had scored 1-5 and done all sorts of other damage. Little point though. Boylan is an accentuate-the-positive guy.

"Ollie had a wonderful game, I'm delighted for him, he's a very talented player, he went very, very well. His goal was taken well, but he had to take it well - we had a few chances to hit the target early on and they were well saved."

In the aftermath, with the sympathy being conveyed by Boylan to the losers' dressing-room, it was easy to lose sight of the fact that not only had Meath played without Tommy Dowd, but they had lost Enda McManus minutes after Dessie Farrell had left the field. And in the past week the team had gathered for the sad task of burying John McDermott's mother.

Boylan confirms that McManus pulled a muscle in the top of his thigh, that Tommy Down got out of hospital for the afternoon having had a disc removed from his back.

"Can we beat Armagh?" he muses. "We weren't looking beyond today really. Like with last year and the year before losing, well, today was a major battle in itself."

Inside the dressing-room Ollie Murphy is towelling his shaved head. One goal and five points from play in a Leinster final against the Dubs. Only his second start in a provincial final. Days don't come dropping much sweeter than this. Ollie isn't a man to splurge the words. He says what is plainly obvious, no more.

"I'm happy as Larry. It's great to win, it's great to get a goal. I got the first point early enough and it gives you a good touch of the ball. "For the goal, Trevor got a good ball in over the top and I just hit it and it went in. Trevor is deadly fast for those. He's very accurate with them, and when he gets the ball he makes it easy for the rest of us. I sort of tumbled the man in front of me and that made it easier. "We were fairly determined. We wanted to win it for John and Tommy, there was a lot of motivation there."

Trevor Giles, he of the revolutionary sleeveless jersey and the perfect generalship of his team, conceded that the goal had formally ended a game which was drifting towards an inevitable conclusion anyway.

"I suppose that was the crucial score, the goal. It just broke to me and I gave it in to Ollie. He was winning the ball all day; we said we'd keep putting it into him."

Giles's performance was redolent of his wonderful pomp back in 1996, sweeping across the middle third of the field, picking up all manner of possession and distributing it flawlessly. He broke Dublin hearts yesterday with his excellence. His recovery from his cruciate ligament injury of a year ago seems complete.

"For two weeks now the knee hasn't been sore at all. This day last year I had a bad day, I'm just glad today turned out better."

And, with the modesty that marks the team, he disappears off to the other side of the dressing-room. Quiet, determined good grace rather than triumphalism marks the whole atmosphere.

Sean Boylan makes a point of expressing his team's gratitude towards the media for their solicitousness in the aftermath of the death of John McDermott's mother.

"Wait a minute," says somebody, "you're thanking us?"

"Yes, and I mean it sincerely," says Boylan.

"You getting all this, Mattie Murphy?" murmurs somebody else, and Sean Boylan drifts on serenely. Summer's most popular winner.