SFC Qualifier Monaghan v MeathMonaghan selectors Noel Marron and Declan Brennan explain to Keith Duggan why Colm Coyle is so well placed for today's match All-Ireland

Watching the qualifying draw on television, Noel Marron could but laugh when Meath were pitted against his native county.

Even if there had been two hundred names in the mix, the result would have been the same.

"Sure Monaghan has never got an easy draw," says the member of boss Colm Coyle's backroom team.

Meath lost dramatically last Saturday evening and Monaghan quietly won and that night, a sense of fatalism quickly set in. Coyle would reveal that he felt the counties were destined to meet. Marron did too.

Even in good times, Monaghan have always had a quirky relationship with the gods. It is certainly the most tantalising draw of the round, with Coyle, the most emblematic of Meath players in the 1990s, coming face to face with Seán Boylan, the tireless sage under whom he apprenticed as a player and a selector.

"It was bound to happen," sighs Marron.

In the beginning, Marron just joined Declan Brennan to come along and help the Meathman to become acquainted with the scene in Monaghan.

He knew Coyle vaguely from playing against him once or twice and like most football people, he regarded the appointment with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation.

"Initially, there was a bit of a surprise that an outsider had been chosen. When anyone new comes in, there is that bit of excitement and I think a lot of people were certainly looking forward to seeing what a man of his achievements would bring to the set-up.

"The first few times we had around 70 players in for trials and that was gradually narrowed down. I just came along to lend a hand really and afterwards, Colm asked me if I would consider the role of selector. And I thought it was a great honour."

Fast forward to Clones and May and the first great coup of the summer, when Monaghan unseated Armagh, the All-Ireland champions.

What struck many people that evening was how cool and under-stated Coyle was.

He fished out a pack of smokes and leaned against a wall along the narrow tunnel that runs beneath the stand in Clones and wryly poked fun at his own reputation as the hard man's hard man and at his growing celebrity in Monaghan. He was pleased, but far from astonished.

"No, we felt we had a reasonable chance going into that game," says Brennan. "And it was great the way it worked out. But there was no point in losing sight of the fact that it was only one game."

It was also noted that Coyle's philosophy as a manager appears to differ greatly from his chief strengths as a player, when he inflicted an iron will and his sinewy physique on opposition attacks with telling and sometimes controversial effect.

He himself admits that the type of football he espouses was always open and measured and it was in that manner that Armagh were beaten. From the beginning, he was his own man.

"His great strength has been his ability to very quickly instil a sense of spirit into the team," says Brennan.

"We worked very hard early on. We went out to Portugal for a few days and it was like two or three weeks training. Being together all the time allowed Colm to get to know the players very quickly and just by training and eating together, the whole thing became a cause."

Not that the transition was immediately apparent. On paper, it was the Monaghan of old that laboured through the league, with a mediocre result here and a poor result there.

Promotion from the marshes of Division Two eluded them, the first failure of the Coyle era. Prior to the Meathman's arrival, there was a feeling that football was not in as poor a state as last year's humiliation against Fermanagh led people to conclude.

A solid schools programme was in place and Coyle benefited from the inheritance of a talented, if raw, under-21 team and older players just waiting for guidance and direction.

His skill was to harness this potential and set it in motion. Now, the general consensus is that Boylan must have given Coyle some of the magic elixir he feeds his own teams.

But, although Coyle's background is respected, it is not something he draws upon.

"Never," says Brennan. "Not once has he mentioned anything he achieved with Meath.

"He is a very ordinary, down-to-earth kind of fella and I don't think he would even be comfortable going on about All-Irelands or anything like that. And fellas would react in different ways to comparisons like that.

"Colm has always come across as having his feet on the ground, always very relaxed, always able to get a good buzz going at training. What he has done in the past speaks for itself."

Marron noticed his habit of quietly taking players away for small private talks as well.

"He'd constantly work on building a lad's confidence, on reassuring him and telling him what was needed from him and just instilling the sense that this was like a small club that everyone had a role in."

Monaghan were bursting with that belief against Armagh, from older players like Nicholas Corrigan to young marksman Paul Finlay.

The most frustrating aspect was the failure to follow that victory when it came to playing Down. In losing that match, Monaghan passed on the most open Ulster championship in many years.

"It was annoying because we felt we were the better team for long stretches, but Down managed to get the scores at vital times and fair play to them.

"But it did leave us in a critical position against Westmeath and it was great to see how strongly the players responded. They just wouldn't buckle and held out and that has been typical of their attitude."

The depth of Monaghan numbers on the terraces was the other significant aspect of that win. Both Brennan and Marron are astonished at how unconditionally the public has taken to Monaghan this year.

Kids are wearing the blue and white jersey for the first time in decades. Confidence is spreading through the county. Clones will be crammed today, not only for the meeting of two football teams, but of one manager who is a long established cult figure and another who is getting there.

If Coyle was being groomed as the man who would succeed Boylan, his achievements in Monaghan must have greatly strengthened his case.

A win against the old master would be regarded as symbolic of the passing of the torch. Boylan's greatest skill, however, has been to engineer fantastic performances on days when the odds are stacked high against his team.

"I think it is an awkward situation for Colm," says Marron, "and I sympathise with him. Naturally, he would have mixed feelings about seeing his own county and some of his old team-mates running out on to the pitch.

"And I am sure it will be strange standing beside Seán Boylan under these circumstances. It would have been nice to avoid it, but, deep down, you always felt it had to happen."

Coyle is not a sentimentalist, though. When it comes down to it, this game gives him as good a read on the opposition as a manager could hope to have.

"It won't change the preparation at all," says Marron. "The only difference is that he knows this county so well, he probably won't have to make a video. Everything will be in his head.

"And we will need every bit of it. Meath are as tough as a team comes."