Tom Humphriestalks to a former Meath player who admits he was a loose cannon, but now feels he possesses a much longer fuse as a manager

COLM COYLE, to be blunt about it, is a disappointment and a fraud. If you watched him from Hill 16 or other blue states in the 18 years or so that he played county football for Meath you formed a bit of an opinion about him. He was the epitome of Meathness, especially 1980s Meathness, that hard, flinty, unforgiving vintage of royal football which Monsieur Boylan, the Dunboyne sommelier, served at table so often.

Having metamorphosed into a manager, indeed the manager of a Meath side which takes to the championship field tomorrow decimated and dwindled by disciplinary measures, he should be an easy figure to dislike. He should by now have raged like Lear on the heath against all the injustices of the world, we should find him howling at the moon and baying for blood and revenge at the same time. Instead, the affable and sardonic character who inquires as to how the form is now gives no hint of having a soul possessed by a snarling beast.

When Meath run out in Croke Park tomorrow minus a handful of their brightest and best Colm Coyle promises they will be galvanised and will have rallied around their suspended players. He isn't wasting energy on useless rage, however. "There's a bit of doom and gloom at the minute over these suspensions, but sure we'll get over it."

Back in the day Coyle of course mixed the mean hombre image with a tendency for getting caught. Out of the warfare which was the 1988 All-Ireland final he was one of three Meath players later asked by the GAA to "explain" his behaviour. Eight years later in the All-Ireland against Mayo, and one of the most celebrated GAA melees of all time, Colm Coyle was selected along with Liam McHale for the privilege of an early shower.

This year his Meath side came up against Dublin in Parnell Park at a time when the wrath of the GAA was hanging like Damocles's sword above the heads of the home side. All things considered does he feel himself slightly unlucky? He chuckles at the thought. Chuckles some more.

"I wouldn't feel I was unlucky or we were unlucky. Sure, you draw these things on yourself. The recent events in Parnell Park, they were going to clamp down alright. They probably wanted to single out Dublin, and Meath wouldn't have been flavour of the month either over the Cork thing. So throw all that into the mix.

"I thought the suspensions were pretty harsh, but at the same time the rules were there and they were contributing to the melee. Then again having looked at the video there was actually a lot of restraint, fellas trying not to throw punches. But you take the punishment and get on with it.

"If we can use it to develop that siege mentality as Manchester United do so well, maybe it will be an asset. I know the players involved wouldn't be too happy with the suspensions they got. From a management point of view we are promoting lads this week quicker than we would normally. Sometimes you would be reluctant to give youth its fling. If they pull it off it will make us stronger."

You ask him about the recent comments by his old colleague Liam Hayes on the subject of Seán Boylan's condemnation of the Parnell Park brawl. Coyle keeps in close contact with his mentor and indeed after more than a decade and a half playing for Boylan became a selector to him in 2001. He treads a diplomatic line but gets his feelings over.

"Well I suppose everybody has their point of view. He had a little dig at Seán and Bernard ( Flynn). I suppose the players would have been surprised by Seán's comments.

"At the same time I read the comments and Seán had a point in one way when he said that when a lad gets a bang now or a shoulder they won't get up and get on with it, they pop up and start fighting a bit. He was fairly accurate on that.

"Look, I have seen worse melees and more dangerous ones and punches being thrown. Sure, weren't we involved in the ultimate one? Anybody, though, who would play football or take out a team would look at it and see that a lot of players showed restraint and were trying not to raise the fists. I'm not saying it is handbags or dismissing it, it doesn't look good to spectators. At the same time it has to be put into context."

His serene and detached sense of ironic amusement at the goings on in the world are a surprise to those who would have felt that a player who lived by the sword would probably manage with quite a swash to his buckle also.

What's the difference between Colm Coyle the player and manager? He laughs again. He knows you are basically asking if he is a psychopath in the dressingroom. "Poles apart, " he says. "I suppose when you manage you have more responsibility. You have to lead by example. There are 30 different personalities to keep happy. I try to do the best things for the team. As a player you concentrate on your own game. That's a selfish thing.

"As you pointed out earlier, as usual and as expected, I would have been a bit of a loose cannon as such. In the heat of the battle those things happened. Off the pitch I like to think I have a longer fuse. A much longer fuse."

How long. He played minor for Meath in 1980 winning a Leinster title and moved smoothly into the senior set-up the following year. In 1980, on the minors with Mattie Kerrigan in charge, there was a guy called Seán Boylan who used to come into give the lads rubs.

"I would have got a lot of rubs from playing the Dubs and getting the s**t knocked out of me. Anyway I got to know Seán. he gave the rubs and he was a hurling man."

Which meant he was one of the few who knew Boylan when he was presented in a doubtful senior dressingroom two years later as the new manager. That dressingroom housed some of the strongest personalities to have played on GAA fields in the last 30 years. Coyle's own first senior management experience was in Seneschalstown in the mid 1990s when the players, feeling they were better than results indicated, basically took over their own training and Coyle was the titular manager. Having grown up in dressingrooms which were animated by robust debate, would he encourage the same thing himself? Could he take that?

"I would take it," he says then laughs again. "If they did it! There was a lot of strong personalities in the Meath team in the '80s. Not so much the team in 1996. Myself and Martin O'Connell were the two elder statesmen then and a lot of the lads were new. You didn't really speak unless there was a need to. In the '80s, where we were coming from with Joe Cassells and Gerry McEntee and Colm O'Rourke who had been soldiering for years without success, in hindsight they had to be strong.

"Any of the lads at present, I would welcome their input. It's all about them and their views off the pitch and on. In 70 minutes of football, if things are wrong, you are waiting till half-time to get them right and if they are still wrong you don't get a chance at the end to put them right, so you need players to take responsibility and change behaviour on the field if they have to."

Which brings us to last year. Meath, having grown perceptibly all summer, notably in those two games against Dublin and in beating Galway and then Tyrone, slumped unaccountably lifeless and limp in the All-Ireland semi-final against Cork. CSI Navan could find no credible cause of death. Colm Coyle fingers the environment.

"There is such a hunger in Meath. It got ahead of us. All we had to do in the supporters' heads was turn up against Cork. That seeped in. That is part of why we didn't perform on the day. People were thinking ahead to Dublin or Kerry playing against Meath. That all seeped in and when you send a young team out on a day like that and they realise things aren't happening the way they are supposed to happen, they drop off. They can't change the plan. if we had gone out as underdogs it would have suited us."

Instead they got hammered by the side who would get hammered in the All-Ireland final. "The last good year that Meath had was 2001 when we beat Kerry by the 15 points and the supporters were doing the olé olé olé and slow clapping. You don't like to hear that. There was a thing in Meath for a while that maybe we had cursed ourselves in Croke Park. We performed well last year the first day against Dublin. The second day we competed as well. That gave us huge belief. We proved we can compete. There is not that much of a gap between the top teams."

Colm Coyle took over the job in Meath hoping he could return the team to the status of unpopularity. Last year was a good start. The football he had chosen as his template is more vintage 1996 than 1988 and his team at times can look irresistible. A good start is half the work. Tomorrow the work progresses.