Jumpy moments for the front row of the press box during the closing minutes of Sunday's All-Ireland final. With wet conditions and a greasy ball, one hopeful punt followed by a fumble and our interviews with John McDermott and Trevor Giles would be half a hemisphere nearer home than we can look forward to in the weeks ahead. Of course we needn't have worried.

In all the years of championship under Sean Boylan, I can't recall Meath blowing a lead in the run for the tape and certainly not by comparison with the number of matches which they have hauled back or put away in the last 10 minutes. As has been observed over the past couple of days, Boylan's era in Meath has been a phenomenon.

On Sunday, the Dublin team of 1974 were centre-stage for the silver jubilee presentation. They looked in fine fettle and it was reassuring to see that their out-spokeness hasn't been mellowed by the passage of time - as demonstrated by David Hickey's protest against the Cuban blockade.

Their presence was a sign of time flying for a number of people, myself included, whose first real engagement with the world of the GAA dates back to the emergence of that team which in so many ways marked the beginning of the modern era in Gaelic football.

Aside from the valuable role in reclaiming from soccer a good deal of popular support for the GAA in Dublin, Kevin Heffernan (surely he should have been honoured with the players on Sunday) introduced the concept of the team manager - as distinct from the coach - and his team radically altered the standards applying to fitness and preparation.

That their pioneering approach was swiftly adopted in Kerry and put to even more formidable use was a great irony, given Heffernan's tortured relationship with the Kingdom.

Mick O'Dwyer's achievement in winning eight All-Irelands in 12 years will surely never be equalled but both he and Heffernan have now been plausibly joined at the top table of intercounty management by Boylan. In terms of pure numbers, O'Dwyer's record is outstanding but on a different level, Boylan can claim his own distinction.

The argument has run before that Dwyer had an exceptional bunch of players at his disposal and whereas no one can argue that there wasn't an All-Ireland or two in them regardless - within reason - of manager, it can certainly be stated that the Waterville man performed a miracle of management and organisation to keep the show on the road as long as he did.

Heffernan managed four teams to All-Irelands. Even if we accept Tony Hanahoe's management role in both 1977 when Heffernan had publicly retired and 1983 when he was ill for much of the summer, it also has to be accepted that in previous years, as both a selector and innovative player, Heffernan was an influence on the All-Ireland victories of 1958 and 1963.

How does Boylan compare with his illustrious predecessors? Heffernan is no longer active at inter-county level whereas Dwyer's best chance of adding to his total - as well as proving himself with a completely different team - probably passed last year.

One interesting method of comparison is to look at the composition of the All-Ireland winning teams. Over the 25 years since Dublin suddenly emerged, there have been 26 titles won. Sixteen of those have been the responsibility of the above three managers - leaving eight managers credited with the remaining 10.

During Mick O'Dwyer's eight All-Ireland wins, he named 26 players to start successful finals. Between his first and last successes, 197586, there were 10 changes to the team and only five players who bagged all eight medals each. Heffernan's 1983 win was achieved with a team largely changed from the 1970s. Consequently he used 31 players to win four All-Irelands and only two survived from 1974 to 1983.

Boylan's record in this regard is the best of the lot. His four All-Irelands deployed 38 players (36 if you exclude Padraig Lyons and Mattie McCabe who started the 1988 drawn final but not the victorious replay) and none survived 1987-99.

It would be difficult to sustain the argument that a vast number of that 38 were born with All-Ireland success written into their genetic coding. Boylan's forte has been the amount he can extract from players. No other manager gets the best - or a goodly proportion of it - out of footballers on such a regular basis.

This is one of the reasons why the team is so hard to beat in a tight finish. They have confidence in themselves to survive and their experience backs that judgment. It also puts the frighteners on other teams. When your opponents are famous for winning matches in the last 10 minutes, it's hard not to be rattled when the 60th minute arrives and you're level or - like Cork on Sunday, a point behind.

Since the Leinster final of 1995 and the defeat by Dublin on a scale which the great PJ Carroll once described as a "notorious hammering", Meath's revamped team has been consistently the best team in the country. The All-Ireland win of 1996 was an even sharper example of their capacity to survive and in the two years which followed, they were fairly close to emulating that success.

There is also a relentless improvisation. Three years ago, the team's scoring burden was carried by Brendan Reilly and Tommy Dowd. For most of this summer, neither have been available. Bearing such a loss would have seemed impossible back then yet with three new forwards and the restoration of the one irreplaceable attacking influence, Trevor Giles, they have managed.

Injuries and indiscipline militated against them since 1996. The loss of Darren Fay, Mark O'Reilly and Graham Geraghty through suspension as well as injury to Martin O'Connell played a major role in the comprehensive defeat by Offaly in the 1997 Leinster final. At the same stage last year, Brendan Reilly was sent off against Kildare and even more critically Trevor Giles sustained his cruciate injury with 15 minutes to go.

There's nothing a team can do about accidental injuries but the indiscipline which played an even greater role was largely remedied. Before the final Enda McManus articulated the team view by saying that Meath had realised two things: one, that their recent defeats had been largely self-inflicted and two, that they were very hard to beat with a full team. Consequently a special effort was made to mind themselves.

It is sobering to reflect that had such a commitment been undertaken two years ago, Meath could be celebrating their status as only the third county to win an All-Ireland four-in-a-row. Then again, you can only take hypothesis so far.

After all, if I had a proper job, no one would be reading this - or more precisely, none of this would have been written.

E-mail: smoran@irish-times.ie