Boylan's young guns shoot down All-Ireland champions
On the national scene Meath are very well represented with many high-profile and well-regarded journalists plying their trade in sport, politics and current affairs.
In a series of features over the last few weeks FERGAL LYNCH asked some of those national journalists to take time out from their hectic schedules to pen a few words recalling their favourite sporting memory.
Today we feature the Irish Independent's Donnchadh Boyle who tells of Meath's shock win over Dublin in the 1996 Leinster SFC final.
DONNCHADH BOYLE (Irish Independent)
A DUBLIN-based Meath Hill native, Donnchadh worked in local newspapers for three years, including a brief stint as sports editor of the Meath Post newspaper before joining the Irish Independent in 2007 where he has worked mainly as a GAA correspondent. Donnchadh also played with his local Meath Hill club for many years and enjoyed plenty of success.
WITH THE passing of time, the mind plays tricks. But the 1995 Leinster final is seared on the brain for all the wrong reasons.
A point up at one stage in the second half, Meath would lose by ten. The last few minutes were excruciating. Dublin were lords of the manor and at the end, their subs amused themselves with a water fight as the final few minutes ticked down. Meath lost that day and would lose some totems of their team too. O’Rourke, Stafford, Flynn and Lyons – names that had sustained our summers – stepped away.
Even for an 11 year old, it felt like the end of an era. The wiser heads around told me as much. The 1987-88 team was all but broken up. We’d been spoiled for the best part of a decade. My earliest memories are of big days out in Croke Park and Meath wins. The nature of that defeat told us that Meath were set to slip back down the ranks.
So it was in that context that the 1996 Leinster final win gets my vote. In a recent interview, Meath goalkeeper Conor Martin insisted there was a gloomy mood in the county in the build up to their championship opener against Carlow and some predicted a disastrous defeat. Meath were handsome winners that day but the new look side were surely too young to make any real impact.
Still, we did what we always did and packed the car and followed the team. A handsome semi-final win over Laois followed but Dublin, by then the All-Ireland champions, and double figure winners of this fixture just a year earlier, were set to be too strong. It was simply too much to ask that Meath could turn things on its head so soon. We travelled out of a sense of duty more than anything else.
The game itself was tight but Dublin led by two approaching the hour mark. They faded dramatically, with perhaps years of campaigning taking their toll. Meath scored the last four points of the game. In just a year, Leinster’s big fixture saw a 12 point swing.
Instantly a new set of heroes were made. Darren Fay announced himself as the latest in a long list of brilliant Meath full backs. Alongside him, Mark Reilly never stood back. Trevor Giles was all class. Tommy Dowd was everything. Graham Geraghty would put on one of the great Croke Park performances against Tyrone in the All-Ireland semi-final. Those three made up a brilliant half forward line. Their win against Mayo instantly catapulted them into legends status.
And it was that win against Dublin that set them on the road. From there, Sean Boylan built another team of All-Ireland winners and we were spoiled once again with three All-Ireland final appearances in six seasons, including two wins. Golden days. We didn’t know how good we had it.