Perhaps the origins of all this lay in the since forgotten movements of last summer, when Meath, then All-Ireland champions, crashed to Offaly on a dusty June day in Croke Park. Suddenly, they found themselves idle and watching Kerry on television every Sunday.

"We had never played Kerry in the championship before, never beaten them and we had admired them for the last few years," explained Meath's unflappable captain, Trevor Giles afterwards.

"They had been on the road for the last few years and had a fair few replays last year whereas we only had the one game. And we know how difficult it is to come back the year after you win an All-Ireland."

Giles is the kind of man that could watch the sun fall from the sky and not bat an eyelid. He was born without the surprise gene.

Not one of the 61,296 souls watching on in Croke Park yesterday could believe what was transpiring on the field. In that dreamlike second half, the myth of Kerry football was remorselessly tethered and pulled to ground by Seβn Boylan's team.

The lop-sided scoreboard was astonishing enough but the cheering of the Meath hardcore, hurrahing every completed pass, will ring long in the ears of those present. It was an unnerving spectacle. Not for an instant, though did Giles lose sight of the bigger picture.

"The score was not an accurate reflection of the two teams at all. We definitely gave a good team performance - I don't know who stood out.

"Ollie, maybe and Mark O'Reilly and Darren. But we missed a lot as well and we started messing about in the second half - silly football."

The Skryne man shook his head at the memory, when the occasion had fallen into burlesque.

"The crowd gave us great support but then they were cheering all those passes and we started playing to it and that was just silly stuff.

"I'm sure Galway were delighted to see that and we weren't too happy with that in the last 20 minutes but at the same time, it was a good team performance. Any day you beat Kerry, the All-Ireland champions, is a good day."

And as they prepared for another happy trip across the border, that was how they treated it.

"Oh, Lord, lads, we have learned from Kerry, learned from the way they played the game," began Seβn Boylan when Pβid∅ ╙ SΘ enters the dressing-room, a proud man facing into the maybe the toughest evening of his life-long obsession.

Boylan switched straight into work-mode, silencing the showers, setting an air of respect and gathering his boys around to here these words.

"The last time I was in this dressing-room was when we lost to the bould Micko in 1998," Pβid∅ declared with a wry smile.

"That was very difficult, much more so than today. Today was simple because you beat us in every sector of the field. We were outclassed, totally and utterly. Seβn, you made coming up here very easy actually because look it, what can we say, we were beaten."

To perfect silence, he continued: "There are a lot of people I would disagree with in that I have never had any problem with Meath football.

"Meath football is honest to goodness football, it's from the heart, it's passionate. To succeed you need the two ingredients and you have both in abundance. The very best of luck to you."

With that, ╙ SΘ, one of Kerry's eternal winners as a player, took his leave and returned to his own. It was not an afternoon for inquisitions: how, after all, could the vanquished hope to explain what the victors could not?

"It was an experience I will never forget," admitted Cormac Murphy.

"Just this roller coaster and then for the last 25 minutes, they really never looked like threatening. At no level of football have I ever experienced that, a situation where for 25 minutes, you are under no real pressure.

"A lot of it has to go down to t he way our forwards tackled back. That is something we worked on in training - that when they have the ball, you are a defender and when you have it, you attack."

There it was, the Meath philosophy, simple but beyond comprehension.

At times, they executed it to perfection. Convention was abandoned. Geraghty, the full forward, could be found on his own goal-line, McDermott, the stay-at-home midfielder, roaming forward for goals. Kerry, mortals, like us all, had no answer.

"I spoke to Mike Frank (Russell) afterwards and I just said 'it wasn't your day, it didn't go well' and he accepted that. They even had chances but missed a lot as well. They just never really got going."

Kerry departed palely. Mossy Lyons offered a few words as he began the long trail south where the mourning period will linger for a while.

"Terrible way to go," he murmurs. "Never really got into at all. But I think we are young enough to come back."

But that was the sort of day that turns good men old. Someone wondered would we see the godly Maurice Fitz in the city again. Somehow even he got lost in the maelstrom of this uncanny Meath madness.

So, not for the first time in his life, Seβn Boylan face d dozens of stares, each asking for the sacred words that would put some sense of the day.

"Look lads, these things happen in football - I would like to think people understand that it was the lads out on the pitch who did it. We just create the environment for them. Don't ask me how to explain it."

And back came the stares. If the herbalist knows not the source, then Meath will remain a mystery. Just as they like it.