These are heady days for those of us who believe in and actively propagate that once unfashionable credo known as the Cult of the Manager. This summer has been a triumph. New men. New ways. New teams. In September we will crown novel champions. Tony Blair would be pleased. There was a time when it was a punishable heresy to regard managers as anything other than an unwarranted interference with the athletic exuberance of the fine young broths which counties sent out to represent them.

Great big brawny broths they were, too, reared on porridge and a fear of Christian Brothers. Their philosophy, passed from generation to generation, was expressed in five succinct words: "Never did me any harm."

Mean men with the words. They'd fetch footballs out of the sky in their big crater hands and promptly they'd dispatch it skywards again. So it would go for 70 minutes. That was football.

Somewhere along the line, though (I suspect with the flouridisation of water or the winning of the first Eurovision - Dana, you've got some nerve showing your face around here again, go and sort out Derry football), the broths became cursed with stupidity. Kerry, free from the curse but stricken in the end with ennui, won All-Irelands by sheer force of habit.

Nature being what it is, a pert little super race soon evolved. Managers. Tracksuits for a better way. Their philosophy was passed on in seven succinct words: "I'm not a man to thump tables."

We left behind the world where the third midfielder ruse was considered to be the zenith of tactical progress. Players have become as versatile as tupperware. They are tended to by flocks of dieticians, psychologists, physios and image consultants. They are the better for it.

The cowardly thing to do here would be to prostrate myself before the flagbearers of this managerial race, to get down lower than a snake's belly and grovel for their approval and beg to be spared their scorn. I am a journalist. I have done it before and will do it again. Today.

If this year's football season has proved anything, it has proved that football is moving on, evolving in ways of its own before the flatfooted policemen of the game can make it is safe.

Less than 12 months we were feverishly committing the thought to paper that Gaelic football was a post mortem waiting to happen. Too many punch-ups, too little flow. Avert your eyes, dears.

We columnists had a field day. Gaelic football was one sick cow and we saw ourselves as genial James Herriots, with our arms buried up to the shoulder in the sick cow's backside, while the slack-jawed locals gathered around and waited for our educated diagnosis.

"No flow. Ill-defined tackle, I'm afraid chaps. Causes nasty outbreaks of bile just like you've been seeing. You were right to call."

"What'd 'e say?"

" 'E says there be no flow. Says 'e'll find tackle or summat."

"Aye. 'E's been to college. Leave 'im be."

Hurling had re-emerged as the game of choice and as football became degraded and corroded, we modestly proposed that footballers from certain counties should wear lepers' bells, so that polite folk might know when they were approaching.

Yet, this summer, football has emerged as a better game. There have been acts of barbarity, of course, and sure in truth we wouldn't be without them, but in general we have had more good games and a uniformly better standard of football than we have had for years.

PART OF the reason for the renaissance is that football is a better game to play than it is to watch. There are few experiences in sport as dizzying as getting in under the skin of a good game of Gaelic football to the extent that the rest of life becomes blurry.

Football is a physically exuberant game, a pell-mell, hour-long scatter through time and space, played at a speed which is extraordinary by the standards of any professional sport. It still needs corrective surgery, but the evidence of this summer is that the best have got better at it. We have a new generation of managers to thank, too.

The number of exotic tactics on offer this weekend alone was extraordinary. The movement of the Offaly forwards on Saturday afternoon was a revelation to watch. They switched formations again and again and cut through a stingy Meath defence repeatedly. Their midfield was mobile to the point of being frenetic. The full-back line was troubled occasionally, but in John Kenny they had the best wing back on view.

More than that, Offaly were mentally resilient. Every time Meath came back at them you expected them to shrug their shoulders and wait for defeat to embrace them. After all, Offaly people still wake at night, lathered in cold sweat, wondering how Meath pulled back a 10-point second-half lead in the Leinster final of 1970.

Offaly just kept the faith on Saturday, though. When Jimmy McGuinness clipped in his sublime goal, Offaly merely cut loose and clipped four quick points over. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Seldom has a game which ended with an eight-point margin been so enthralling. Looking back, we should have known that the end for Meath would come when least expected. The question is why we expected so little of any team managed by Tommy Lyons?

Tommy has a great old-fashioned affability about him, a sociable fella with a garrulous sense of humour which makes one wonder just how it is that he motivates fellas in a dressing-room.

A story which Mick Leahy used tell about Tommy's days in Kilmacud illustrates a little about his inventiveness in the manner of man-management. Tommy dropped the monumental Leahy for a key game, taking Mick aside beforehand and whispering the bad news to him. Leahy, on the verge of tears, stumbled away, confused and bruised. Tommy called him back. One more thing, Mick. I want you to give the team talk.

So it goes with Tommy and the new breed.

This is the year when the super race has asserted itself. Bright men. They've got ideas and they're going to use them. To see the footballers of Cavan setting about a training session on a spilling wet night without so much as a prompt from Martin McHugh is to understand that the era of the table thumper is dead.

We met John Maughan on Saturday after the game. He looked a little ashen. His team have been slavering after a re-match with Meath for some time after all. He looked ashen, but there is no off switch on the new managers console. John started talking Offaly up immediately.

"So you're shagged, John."

"You just keep writing it, Tom."

Meath are gone. Dublin are maybe the fourth-best team in Leinster. Football is filled with lean managers who wear hungry looks.

The world is fleeting. All things pass away.