Sean Boylan is the professor of big-match draws in football. Meath's manager has been successful in two replayed All-Ireland finals (the only manager to achieve this since Kerry's legendary coach Dr Eamonn O'Sullivan over 50 years ago).

His status was acknowledged by crowds departing last Sunday's drawn All-Ireland final. For Boylan the match was a novel experience.

"Walking out of Croke Park, I realised I'd never experienced a draw like that before - as a spectator," he says. "There were Galway and Kerry people all around saying `ask this man about the replay'."

Despite the mounting difficulties for GAA administration and the numbed sense of anticlimax so obvious at the All-Ireland lunch on Monday, Boylan believes that replaying the final is a better idea than playing extra-time at the end of the first drawn match.

"I firmly disagree with the idea. I'd go for the replay. On Sunday, I felt it was a fair result. Both sides had chances of getting scores at the end. I'd hate to see a situation where we had to have penalties or something like that.

"One improvement that could be made is that teams mightn't have to wait as long for the replay. I think teams would love to get out again the following week."

Whereas few would disagree with his objection to settling All-Irelands by form of instant arbitration, there is a strong argument that the easy recourse to replays should be changed.

Boylan's adversary of four years ago John Maughan at the time took the same line as the Meath manager. His view was that extra-time is a destabilising factor and that most team managers would prefer to revert to the drawing board and do it again.

Despite this uniformity among managers, change may be on the way. The whole issue of playing extra-time on the first day of championship matches is due to become a norm next year if recent proposals on the football championship are accepted at next month's special congress.

The report of the intercounty schedule work group proposes a parallel championship, drawing in defeated teams all the way up to provincial finals and instituting All-Ireland quarter-finals. Up to that round, extra-time will be played.

This provision will not apply to provincial championships, but the proposed additional matches would create pressure to resolve fixtures quickly and cut back on the number of replays and their potential to wreck schedules.

Padraig Duffy, chairman of the Work Group, is also the chairman of the Games Administration Committee which would have the responsibility of implementing a fixtures schedule under the proposed new structures. He is mindful of the logistical nightmares which may lie ahead.

"I think when the time comes, this is something we'll have to look at again. It's provided for up to the quarter-finals of the open-draw championship, but provincial championships will continue to have replays.

"I sympathise with the financial arguments for replays in a province like Connacht where a lot of their matches were disappointing and a replay might have lifted the summer.

"But I don't agree that we would need the additional profile of these matches if the new proposals are accepted. They will give a whole series of extra big games."

Boylan nonetheless feels that, after 70 minutes without a winner, everyone's entitled to regroup. He believes that the time between draw and replay is useful for teams.

"What you do is go back to basics. Get back to the training ground and sort out what we didn't do right. You don't go hard on physical training. Mentally, teams expect to be finished and suddenly they're not but have another two weeks. But I would always prefer the idea of having a second run at it.

"Physically it's not a big problem. Players are alright after four to five days. But they're used to that, it's the same in any championship match let alone an All-Ireland. After that few days, everyone's delighted to go again. In the Dublin matches in '91, we played two of the replays in successive weeks.

"One thing players decided was not to get as much involved in tickets and that sort of thing, to stay out of the razzmatazz. Our approach to the media was also different. We announced the team and that, but didn't have an open day. It was more like a normal championship game."

Aside from the desire of managers to retain control, the principal argument against mandatory extra-time in provincial matches would be financial.

But enhanced revenues will strengthen Croke Park's hand if it comes to discussing compensation with provincial councils in the event of replays being reduced. Of course, if matches were level after extra-time, they would still proceed to a second match.

Another issue - covered before on these pages - is that of the independent timing method to remove the responsibility of time-keeping from referees. Some senior sources at Croke Park believe that this simple innovation would dramatically cut down on replays because it would break up the culture of complicity which leads to so many draws.

Many referees appear to feel under some sort of pressure to manipulate time-keeping to enhance the chances of a draw.

Others prefer the introduction of soccer's electronic signs to indicate the amount of injury-time to be played. This would leave timing still in the hands of referees, but force their hand in relation to adding on the correct amount of time.

It can also be argued that recent rule changes make the automatic staging of extra-time more acceptable. Teams may now introduce five substitutes during ordinary time and a further three during extra-time. So fatigue can't be advanced as a serious consideration.

Opposition to the introduction of extra-time will rest on two planks: finance and tradition. Finance will be more of an urgent consideration in the provincial arguments, but tradition will pose the main obstacle to changing the way the All-Ireland matches are run.

In the meantime, the most likely assessment is that innovation will eventually come but in the usual GAA fashion - not until plenty of people have had the chance to get used to the idea.