There is no beginning.

At his ease, Seβn Boylan walks you through his world. His little daughter, Doireann tags after him while the sun makes his hair silver in the morning. Here he stores the herbs. And he pauses for a story. Here he dries the herbs. Another story. No, two. Here, well hold on till I tell you. . . . .

No beginning. His people have been here since 1798 practising this serene trade and before that they were in Tara doing the same thing. His life is a great ganglion of people and stories, each strand connected through Seβn to something else, someone else.

His head is a cavernous store of unlikely links and odd anecdotes which he gathers together under the general heading, comical scenes. As in, I'll tell ya it was a comical scene there for a while.

Everest? When the lads went in 1993 Seβn Boylan gave them a herb to make their tea with. It helped them cope with the altitude. "Gas thing," he says, "a Vincentian priest brought me father the original plant from the Himalayas all the way to Dunboyne back in the '30s".

The national struggle? His Father General Seβn Boylan was interned in Frongoch for six weeks longer than anyone else and was up for execution next in the queue behind Ceannt before John Dillon made his speech to parliament. Once, long ago in the 1960s, an interviewer called to Seβn to talk about the herbs. Seβn inquired where he was coming from. The man was on his way from Roscommon.

"I was doing a little piece on an old by-election down there."

"Ah", says Seβn, "North Roscommon 1917."

"Yes," says the man, "how did you know that?"

"Sinn FΘin's first seat," said Seβn. "My father was the election agent."

"I don't believe you."

"Well, I'll tell you this then. Joe McGuiness (the original prisoner candidate 'put him in to get him out') was replaced by a man called Martin Conlon. His wife Peig was my godmother."

"I don't believe you."

And the interviewer walked the earth for a long time afterwards telling people that Seβn Boylan was the most monosyllabic man he'd ever met.

"He didn't believe me," says Seβn now settling over his cup of tea. "What did he expect? Aw, a comical scene."

He is wantonly open to the wonder of the world around him. Famously, he is late for everything, reluctant to cut himself off from one experience to hurry himself to another. People and their stories always matter more than timetables and in Seβn Boylan people and their stories converge like strands of a magic realist novel.

His parents, to whose care he devoted much of the middle part of his life, are fondly remembered in many of the stories he tells. Which brings us to the eternal mystery of Seβn Boylan. How can a man who drags around the epithet "genial" like it were his birthmark, how can a manager with so little swash to his buckle turn out teams so backboned by steel. There is a toughness to Meath football and to Meath teams which doesn't merely spring from the character of the players, it is transfused into their blood.

Once, years ago, he recalls heading up to Armagh to Paddy Quinn's house. For a man fascinated by politics it was like an anthropologist's heaven up there. In the one family you had IRA, Sinn Fein, civil rights, Peoples Democracy, Republican Fianna Fail. Everything.

"Halfway through the night," he says casually, "I knew I had pneumonia. I ended up in the Mater the next day. When I was in hospital I went unconscious and while I was out one of the radiators broke in the house here in Dunboyne and a fella arrived from the Veha factory to look after it. He knocked. And he said "is this General Seβn Boylan's house?". Now my father never used the title in his life but he said, "it is".

"I'll tell you a great story," the man said, "remember we were picked up in Swords and we went on to Dunboyne and there were four Boylans to be taken away. The English army captain apologised to Mrs Boylan for having to take her four sons. Her answer was that she was only sorry she didn't have four more to worry him with."

There were two people in Dunboyne village at the time not ashamed to be associated with the Boylans. Louis Magee's (the Irish triple crown player) wife and Mrs Yeats the great grandmother of Tina Yeats whom Seβn married. Funny thing about the Veha man's story. Seβn's father died some time later and General Costello told the same story again on the night of the wake.

You stay with Seβn when he is telling you a yarn because some other thought will crop up in his teeming brain and urgently campaign to be aired. Obligingly, he will loop back for it before picking up his original thread again.

All those years tending his father and then his mother should have withered him. There's too much zest in him, though. As a young fella he had his beloved hurling. Even in Belvedere College as a kid he'd drag his hurl everywhere with him.

He had the dreams too. As a 10-year-old he watched Meath win the 1954 All-Ireland and that was it. He wanted to wear the green jersey. He wore it on hurling fields for over 20 years, dabbling in football. Friends told him he was crazy. Good football teams were being put together, trips to Australia could be had. Never cost him a thought.

And he went out every night. His wife Tina, says that Seβn's mother taught herself and every one of her friends how to drink and smoke but Seβn himself was playing truant that week. Neither vice interested him yet he knew every club in Dublin. He'd leave the house in Dunboyne close to pub closing time and be gone for hours on end.

Then he drops a little surprise in.

Of course, there was the go-karting, too.

"What?"

Amidst all this serenity and intuition, there is an unquenchable love for the roar of motor racing. He used go to hurling matches with his go-kart strapped to the back of the car. He went on fire once in Mondello, raced in Monasterboice, Askeaton, all the Irish road circuits, internationally even.

And at night they'd boot around Dunboyne. One rule only, stick to the left. Blessed that they weren't killed, he thinks. Blessed. Jim Collier was the local guard and he had it bad too. He'd arrange for a squad car to give the lads the lights on the road. And away they'd go roaring between the hedgerows.

When Seβn was a kid they had motorbike racing in Dunboyne. Brian Naylor, who still holds the lap record, would leave his car in the Boylan's garage and, while he practised and raced, the kids of Dunboyne sampled the springs in his Maserati. Whatever was in that Maserati rubbed off.

Some of it anyway. Once, Seβn went to Monte Carlo and left after the practice sessions missing the race altogether. He had to get back home because Carnaross were opening their pitch and Meath were playing a challenge there. The lads denounced him as mad. Certifiably so.

But that's his life. Sample the flavour of everything. For a man whose family have lived in the one spot for over 200 years, he is remarkably open to new ideas. The variety and volume of ideas he has brought to the business of training the Meath team since 1982 are legendary. He says that much of it is intuition, an abstract which he relies upon faithfully.

"Sometimes, I'll look at the lads and I'll know what I planned for them is all wrong. I'll just tear it up in my head and start again."

Another story. Some years ago he was seeing a woman. As life wore on after the deaths of his parents he was conscious of the pure loneliness of having nobody to tell his day to in the evenings. He recalls the first Christmas Eve night after both his parents were gone, coming home, turning on a record. "I cried like a child, but I was happy at home."

Yet, some part of him was always resistant to company. "As the fella says, I'd be only going steady when I'd have to break up."

But there was this woman, a lovely girl and he'd seen here a few times and on Christmas Eve she called to the house and left in a present for him. A videotape. The Dead Poets Society. It was a good and thoughtful gift but Seβn looked at it, knew the effect it would have on him and knew he wouldn't be able to watch it for months. He knew too that he couldn't see the woman anymore. Just knew it wasn't right for him.

Tina Yates was home from the convent that year. Tina had come to the Boylans as a kid looking for summer work and right through school herself and seven friends whom Seβn's family fondly nicknamed the choir worked amid the herbs and the pleasant smells.

This Christmas Seβn ran into Tina's parents as they were going down to Caffrey's in Batterstown. They asked him to call down. He said he was going to town and he'd call in later. Duly he did and they had the chat and afterwards Tina, still a Daughter of Charity, came home to Dunboyne in his car. Nothing unusual there. Seβn was 20 years older but comfortable in the company of priests and nuns. They talked. They said goodbye.

That was Christmas. Tina left the convent in March. That August, Seβn had two social engagements and invited Tina along. That night he'd just asked her to marry him when the doorbell rang. It was two weeks before they got back to the subject.

By Christmas they were married, had the reception in a marquee on the worst night ever sent. Lights went, Comical scene. Sure enough, when he watched the Dead Poets Society it had an overwhelming effect on him, the poetry, the loyalty, the very idea of people affecting people so powerfully.

This intuition . . . He told the team a long story before the third Westmeath game this summer about being abroad once years ago and feeling that the driver they had given him to get him to the airport on time was going to crash. Sure enough. This led him to his thoughts on the importance of being ready, stressing unusually the importance of being ready to play with 14 men.

Afterwards, looking back on the match and the sending-off of Hank Traynor, some of the players remarked on this to Brian Smyth who works with Seβn almost as an interpreter for the benefit of players with questions, complaints, troubles, worries etc.

Brian told them that the previous week he had been travelling with Seβn to Gormanstown in the jeep, when suddenly on a clear stretch of perfectly normal road, he saw Seβn press his thumb to the windscreen. There were no loose stones on the road yet a half minute later a stone smashed against the windscreen! Brian Smyth turned to his friend and asked why he'd placed his thumb on the screen. Seβn said he just felt it would happen.

Once, he went to London to see a man in Westminster hospital. The man's family asked him to go. Their son was dying of cancer, they said. They met Seβn there and took him aside. "Listen," they said, "he hasn't cancer, he has Aids." He remembers it was a Bank Holiday Monday and Tina and himself had just become engaged. He went into the ward. The man was in bed. Six stone gone off him in two months and a stare that told Seβn that he didn't want him there.

Seβn was easy with that. The man was a gifted musician and only for the intervention of his illness would at that time have been beginning life as the soloist for a major European orchestra. So he just stared at Seβn balefully for 15, 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, Seβn talked to the man's brother. The Chelsea physic gardens were down the road and Seβn talked about them. "It was like having to brag a little bit to let the man in the bed know I had something, some knowledge."

The man had a racking cough. Finally, Seβn asked if he'd mind if Seβn placed his hand on his back. Another five, six, seven minutes passed. The man turned over. Seβn placed his hand there. Fluid on the wall of the lung. Instantly, the man settled. He let a big yawn and settled.

Seβn rose to leave and in the corridor he met the man's parents. There was sugar coating it. He's going to die, but he's at peace, he said, now we're going down to the Abbey.

And off he went looking for Tina.

"I found her outside. She was talking to this old woman who was sitting on the wall. Tina introduced her as Bridie. This was a woman from Derry who had been in an enclosed order and left. She never went home again for the shame of it. she slept in doorways for 23 years afterwards and Tina had helped her when she was a nun in London. She'd give her breakfast and tea. She and Tina were standing there having a smoke.

Bridie was talking about Mother Theresa and Cardinal Hume. Seβn was enthralled. Finally, when they said goodbye it was time to turn back towards the hospital. Seβn spoke to Tina about Bridie, the wonder of her being asked to build a hospital by Cardinal Hume. And Tina said "sure that's all in her dreams".

"And you said nothing?"

"Sure isn't she happy?"

"I'll never forget that. This man upstairs who had everything and this poor woman below sitting in the doorway. Some lesson."

That's the life which informs his football. The joke used to be that if he stuck around long enough the Meath team would make a manager of him. He made winners of them though and produced teams of such character that they define our whole view of the county they spring from.

Small beginnings. An O'Byrne Cup. The Centenary Cup. He remembers 1986 losing a league quarter-final to Dublin by a point. Beforehand, Brian Mullins jokingly placed an arm around his shoulder and said, "Seβn you'll win the league and we'll win Leinster". Seβn knew that day, in his blood he knew it that it would be the other way around.

Tomorrow, he goes looking for his fifth All-Ireland as a manager. Dublin have won just two during his tenure.

He has learned lots, he says. Even about drink. "There's affinity between men who go out and have a drink together that people like me will never be part of," he says. "I used to talk to lads in the pub and they'd be complaining about something and I'd go away and get it fixed and I'd meet them again and say hey, I got that fixed up and they'd say what? Looking at me as if I had 10 heads. It was just talk, their chance to get things off their own chest. I was intruding."

And it's not all moments from the desiderata either. He is tough and resilient. He remembers on an All Star tour in 1988 Ciarβn Duff of Dublin passing his table with a pint in his hand and nodding towards the stage of a pub in Boston. "There's only one man can save that fella from himself," said Duff, "and that's you."

Whooping it up on stage at that moment was one of the best footballers in the country. Jinksy! David Beggy. Meath were due to play Dublin in a National League replay two weeks later. Beggy was enjoying himself. It was 4.15 in the morning.

People always said to Seβn not to be so horrid hard on Jinksy, but now Seβn said nothing. Not till they got to San Francisco late in the trip.

"You love the music, Dave," said Boylan in a quiet moment.

"Yeah, I love the music and I love the oul showing-off," said Jinksy walking towards the propellors.

"What must it be like to play music in front of 20,000 or so people," mused Seβn, "imagine that feeling."

"Must be amazing," agreed Jinksy.

"Is it like that playing football in front of that many people Dave," asked Boylan.

"It is a bit Seβn, yeah," said Jinksy, still walking.

"And do you think that you'll ever play in front of that big a crowd again?"

Silence. "Oh lord Jesus," Jinksy said.

End of story. And never another word.

Or take the spring of this year. Dublin played Meath in a challenge in Santry in a foggy Saturday morning. Two teams putting the foot-and-mouth lay-off behind them. Some things can't be put behind anyone though and Vinny Murphy's brawn was soon the lingua franca of the game. Trevor Giles suffered a few heavy blows and the game was getting out of hand.

Suddenly and incredibly for the Dubs who had never seen this before, Seβn Boylan exploded. Popped like a geyser. Over the line, on the field, straight towards Murphy. They had to rush to hold him back.

"Yeah" he says now. "I felt that it was over the top. I lost the head completely. Nothing personal. If it was our own lads playing on their own I would have lost it in the same way. We were both feeling our way back. It was not the place. Crazy scene. I apologised to the lads myself. We'd all gone so long without football. It was all pent up."

You look for the key to the genius of Seβn Boylan and perhaps it's his humility. Famously, a few years ago, a new Dublin coach told his team that he would be all things to all men. There would be no special coach, no dietician, no team facilitator "and if you have problems upstairs I'm a bit of a headman too".

Boylan surrounds himself with the best. His friend and confidante Denis Murtagh is a first line of defence. He has time for a quick Denis Murtagh yarn. The 1999 final. Seβn came up out of the tunnel, took the jumper off, threw it on the bench and it started.

"Go way ya bollix."

The Meath bench was in front of the Cork fans. One beauty.

Out on the field Seβn went, out to talk to the lads. Comes back and the abuse is burning his ears. The only break is for the National Anthem and even at that Bigmouth can't wait for the finish.

The match is on. Phillip Clifford puts a ball over the sideline near Seβn who grabs the ball and throws it to Cormac Murphy. Apoplexy behind. So Denis Murtagh says to James Reilly who was involved at the time. "Next time your man starts at Seβn I want you to turn around and say this to him." And James says: "I couldn't possibly say that."

Denis says: "just say it."

Seconds later, the abuse starts. James turns around. "You! Shut your f****** mouth."

"Go way you, ya baldy c***," says the man in the stand. And for the rest of the match he abused James Reilly.

He has two selectors, Eamon O'Brien and Colm Coyle. Then there is Brian Smyth, a sort of facilitator for team meetings, a confidant for players and manager alike, a buffer in times when people get tired of hearing the one voice.

And Denis Smyth, who tackles the logistics from tickets to hotels. And Eoin Lynch would spend half an hour every evening making sure balls are right, gear is right. Pat Kelly looks after transport. Eoin Clarke and Michelle Lyons the physios. Dorothy and Karen, the masseuses. All there performing labours of love.

Love is at the heart of it, the secret of keeping on, keeping on.

Last year, after they lost early in the summer, Seβn was driving to the Chinese in Navan with Mochie Regan and his wife Susan and with Tina. They were passing Dealgan Park and Tina caught Seβn's wistful glance. She says: "Do you want to go in and drive around Seβn, you can get help for this you know, for these withdrawal symptoms."

And they laughed at the truth of it. A comical scene.

"It seems crazy. There are nights when snow might be coming down or sheets of rain or whatever and you'd wonder about it all but I'd always be glad when I got there that I had gone. I'd get something out of it always."

And there is no end.

Tina left the convent in March. That August, Seβn had two social engagements and invited Tina along. That night he'd just asked her to marry him when the doorbell rang. It was two weeks before they got back to the subject. By Christmas they were married.