LEINSTER SFC FINAL"I ALWAYS said there is a certain madness in Meath football," said Seán Boylan yesterday. He would know. "You can't take that out of us. You can't structure us. That is true. It is a mad belief that you can always win and it has always been the same."

No better warning can be offered to Pat Gilroy’s Dublin ahead of Sunday’s Leinster final. Up in Croke Park yesterday there was a significant gathering of those involved in the epic, four-game war between Dublin and Meath in 1991. The Leinster Council will honour both teams, along with Boylan’s and Paddy Cullen’s management, before Sunday’s game.

It is the first time since 2001 these rivals have met with silverware awaiting the winner.

Even for Alan Brogan, Dublin’s longest serving panellist, this is something new (by the way, Graham Geraghty has ruled himself out of contention. The 39-year-old has not recovered from an Achilles problem sustained last February).

“Yeah, it is strange that I’d never played Meath in a Leinster final,” said Brogan, who is seeking an eighth provincial medal.

“We’ve obviously played them in Leinster semi-finals, Leinster quarter-finals and those games have been just as big and just as intense as what I expect on Sunday.

“Bar the game two years ago where they got the five goals against us, they’ve all been fairly close, very intense affairs, and I expect no different on Sunday.”

Brogan admits that 2010 defeat was a watershed moment for Gilroy’s Dublin.

“I think between that game and the All-Ireland quarter-final against Kerry, when they beat us by 17 [in 2009] we decided we’d need to change something, that you just can’t afford to concede five goals in a game or you can’t afford to concede the scores Kerry got against us.

“It probably was a watershed for us in that thankfully, it hasn’t happened too often since, where we’ve had to ship losses like that.

“Meath are probably the one team in Leinster who have pushed us really close. They’re the only team that have beaten us in Leinster since 2005, I think. So that in itself says something. They certainly won’t have any fear coming into it.

“They’ve always been a different beast in the championship. I think they showed that against Kildare.”

Boylan also commended the work of Séamus McEnaney’s management team since the disastrous events at Páirc Tailteann in April, when an 11-point defeat to Louth saw them relegated to Division Three, and the subsequent fallout.

The turnaround doesn’t surprise him: “Not a bit. I’d be very surprised if it didn’t because knowing the calibre of lads that are there, the amount of hurt, I mean they have taken some stick within their own county.”

Suddenly Meath football is on the cusp of a revival. There is a Harnan and a McEntee on the minor side that faces Dublin in the curtain-raiser.

There is also a young midfielder that utterly dominated the skies in the senior semi-final defeat of Kildare. Conor Gillespie, it turns out, comes from the hardest Royal stock imaginable.

“Conor in the middle of the field, what a great lad, but do you know the pedigree?” Boylan rhetorically enquires. “Mick Lyons’ elder sister is his mother.”

Boylan continues: “There are two things about Sunday. Knowing some of the Dublin management, they would have liked to have beaten Meath on their way to the All-Ireland because of what happened the year before. So they have a carrot.

“Some of our lads have nothing to lose. Their football career has been salvaged.”

Dublin have a game on their hands, alright. Don’t they know it!