Ian O'Riordantalks to Meath manager Colm Coyle and selector Tommy Dowd, former players who know all about playing the Dubs

Is there anything more fickle and annoying in sport than talk of the mood in the camp? It typically starts with hearsay and ranges from "upbeat" to "downbeat", along with any of a dozen other convenient banalities, not excluding "lively" or "gloomy" or, of course, the mood of "unrest".

Evidence that the mood in the camp has any bearing on championship performances is slim. Frequently, it will have no bearing at all. Mood, after all, is highly changeable and influenced by such variables as the weather and the colour of your jumper.

With that in mind it's off to Páirc Tailteann the week before Meath take on Dublin in the Leinster senior football championship, the main purpose being to assess the mood in the camp. What you're about to read, therefore, may or may not have a bearing on the outcome of tomorrow's contest in Croke Park.

Training is scheduled for 7.30pm, and from shortly after 7pm, the players start driving into Páirc Tailteann. First impression is that they're all massive (the players, that is, not the cars, although Graham Geraghty's 07 Range Rover must be the biggest car on the road). Nigel Crawford looks like the biggest midfielder in the country until his partner, Mark Ward, shows up - and he's bigger again. Darren Fay actually looks slightly smaller than expected, but only because he's as wide as he is tall.

Greeting them is selector Dudley Farrell, who is pulling training equipment from the back of his van. He's like a father figure in Meath football, and actual father of suspended forward Brian Farrell. Despite the costly absence of his son his mood seems good.

"No one to blame but himself," says Farrell, when confirming what a loss Brian will be on Sunday.

As the players file into the dressingroom their mood too seems good (again, Geraghty is the exception, understandable given the recent election results). They also look tanned, one of the effects of a training week in the Algarve shortly before their first-round win over Kildare. Forward Joe Sheridan, another near giant of a man, reckons that week away did wonders for their mood.

"That's really where it all comes from," he says, "a good atmosphere in the camp, everyone getting on well. Beating Kildare also gave us great confidence. The first round of the championship, you never know what way it's going to go. But between beating Kildare, and beating Roscommon and Monaghan before that, the confidence is definitely up."

Tommy Dowd, the second Meath selector, jumps out of his car with the energy of a man training for an All-Ireland final. His playing days may be behind him, but he wouldn't want them back, not with the fire in him now. Dowd talks about Dublin as if he's still readying to play himself.

"Dublin are Dublin," he says, "and no matter what 15 they put out they'll always be hard to beat. They are very resilient team. We think we're in with a chance of beating them though. We've a championship game under our belt. We know Dublin will come out for the first 10 minutes and be absolutely flying. It will be up to us just to stay with them, and do that for the first 20 minutes or so you're always going to be in with a shout.

"We also know you're only as good as your last game too. If we lose by six or seven points on Sunday we're back to square one. If we do manage to beat Dublin on Sunday then you can start talking about making progress."

Then, a little after 7.30pm, manager Colm Coyle drives up - he walks from his car with the look of a man who knows he's running late, and not at all bothered by it. Coyle has always had a slightly nonchalant attitude towards football. He does things his way, doesn't lose sleep over the consequences.

This is the man who, in 1987, famously packed his bags for Chicago just as Meath were on the verge of a breakthrough. Coyle had been brilliant at right-half back in the previous year's All-Ireland semi-final against Kerry, but he did what he wanted to do. He returned, unexpectedly, in time for Meath's semi-final against Derry, but he couldn't get his place back in the defence, therefore forcing his conversion to the forwards. Naturally, he argued face-to-face about it with Seán Boylan.

It's said he never truly resettled in the Meath team, partly through his own accord. He just didn't mind. Yet his effort on the pitch, first discovered in helping Meath to the Leinster minor title in 1980, though sometimes over-zealous, never left him.

He's also the scorer of one the most famous points in All-Ireland history, when, in the dying moments of the 1996 final against Mayo, he hoisted a ball towards the Mayo goal, which bounced on the edge of the parallelogram before looping over the crossbar and forcing the replay. Meath won it, but Coyle was caught up in the infamous brawl under the railway end and red-carded.

If even something like that bothered him he never showed it, and definitely not since retiring after the 1997 season. Coyle has always kept a lot to himself, so much so that few people actually know what he does for a living. He talks mostly in understatement, heavy on the sarcasm, and wit.

So what is the mood in the camp?

"We'd be very happy, yeah," he says, with an overstated smile. "The knockout stages of the league did show a bit of form, and that's nice going into the championship. But then to beat Kildare was a big one, because a lot of people had written us off.

"Kildare did have a couple of injuries. But at the same time we had to beat them, and I thought the lads came up with a very professional performance. We were never really in any danger, so we were well pleased with it in the end."

Like so many Meath footballers, Coyle could write a book about playing Dublin, a few sequels too. It clearly excites the current panel as much as it did him: "I just know any lad that plays football in Meath wants to be in Croke Park against Dublin, and probably the same with any county around the country. But outside of an All-Ireland final, the big thing for every Meath footballer is to play against Dublin in Croke Park. It is the glamour tie.

"I know the lads are very excited about it. And it's really not much of a task trying to motivate them. Since childbirth really they're waiting for the crack at them. It's the challenge of it, I suppose, because we do have great respect for the Dubs.

"And vice versa. We've had some great battles over the years, and you always look forward to the next time you play.

"I do find that before your first game it's a step into the known, so we have that game behind us now, and we have been fine-tuning some things that didn't work out or go well that day. Dublin, though, have been hiding in that long grass since the end of the league, and we don't really know to expect from them."

It does seem the mood of uncertainty that surrounded Eamonn Barry's one-year tenure as manager is gone. Barry made no secret of his belief that not everyone in Meath wanted him in the job, and Coyle is not taking all the credit for putting Meath on the right track again.

"People forget they weren't that far off last year, against Laois. They levelled with 15 minutes to go, but were maybe a little naïve defensively, let in two soft goals. But they have been knocking on the door for a while. I suppose the confidence was down. It's a thin line between over-confidence and just enough confidence, but I think the lads are on the right side of that line.

"I think being in Division Two this year actually helped us. After all that happened last year, it was always going to be hard for a new management to come in and turn things around straight away.

"The players had to get to know us, and we had to get to know them, so I think being in Division Two was an advantage there. I mean, on paper, we had easy games, even though we made a great effort to make hard work of them."

One thing that has upset Coyle and the mood in the camp a little is the loss of Farrell, the result of his straight red card against Kildare.

"He'd a tremendous league

for us, and people don't seem to grasp how big a loss he will be. I remember in the bad old days of Meath before Stafford and Giles, that we lost lots of big games against Dublin and other counties just because we didn't have a reliable free-taker. And he's been excellent for us, and his loss will be a major factor."

Maybe it's because he'll be sitting in the stands tomorrow (still banned from the sidelines, alas), but Coyle's mood, along with that of his team, couldn't be much more relaxed - leaving, it seems, all the pressure and expectation on Dublin.

"Well there's no point in getting stressed over it. When the lads are happy, and things are going well, it's very easy to be relaxed. And we've only had the one loss in competitive games this year. Once results go the other way though it can all change. I've been there before."

At least for now then, the mood in the Meath camp is upbeat.

Very upbeat.