By John Harrington

29 years have passed since the epic four-match series between Meath and Dublin in the first-round of the 1991 Leinster Senior Football Championship, but the memories of that day remain undimmed for those who were involved.

Sean Boylan was Meath manager, Paddy Cullen was Dublin manager, Liam Hayes was Meath captain, and Jack Sheedy was the outstanding performer of the series in his first Championship campaign for the Dubs.

All four have shared their memories of a watershed period in the modern history of the Association with GAA.ie.

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There has never been a more dramatic fixture in the history of Gaelic Football than the first round of the Leinster Championship between Meath and Dublin in 1991. It produced four matches, the first million pound gate in the history of the GAA, and moments of drama that live on vividly to this day. Both the winners and the losers remain indelibly marked by the experience.

Paddy Cullen: The four games, it was wonderful for everyone except our team when they lost. It was hard to take at the time. The expression about '91 was that you won all four games. But we didn't win one of them. And it felt like that as well that we had won the four games, when we actually lost. And if you look at it, simple things cost us. I can't say it was enjoyable. Looking back on it, I don't like looking at the videos, because it is like a movie that you know the ending of. But I am sure in Meath, they re-live it and re-live it and fair play to them, they won it. What can you do?

We were every bit as good as Meath and better, we just didn't win. People saying it's like a death in the family. It's not. I believe in sport and I believe things can go wrong, things have gone wrong. So what, it's a game. That's the way I look at it. A lot of people don't like that either, saying it's only a game. They say you're supposed to kill for it. I don't believe in that either. I believe in playing football, I believe in hitting hard and doing your utmost and leaving it on the pitch, whatever you have left in you. And that's what we did and it worked for the gallery, it worked for the people who came to watch it which was a nice thing too. But at the end you do like to get a bit of reward for it for the lads, not for me, I got my rewards long ago.

Liam Hayes: It's scary that it's 25 years now. Not just how time flies, but how such much has happened since then with so many big teams and rivalries in the mean-time. Johnny Cooper said last week that the Meath-Dublin rivalry is folklore. I just thought that was a funny expression to use. Folklore when you look it up is something that's handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. So he was more or less saying there isn't really a rivalry anymore. For young Dublin footballers and even Meath footballers now, it really is folklore.

Jack Sheedy: I suppose it happened in a blur in lots of ways too but you would have fairly vivid memories of it because it was so real at the time, or surreal even, at the time because it grew a life of its own with each game as it passed. From that point of view it's something that's not easy to forget. Though there are parts of it I'd like to forget. It was my first Championship year and I hadn't played Championship before that so of course I enjoyed the experience. I wasn't 18 or 19, I was 27. It was my first opportunity to play Championship football and I was just giving it everything I could. I suppose I was playing with a certain amount of freedom and I enjoyed every minute of it bar the final whistle. That's the reality. Football was a bit more like that then. You'd give it your best effort and it was far less tactical compared to what it is now.

The 1991 clash between Dublin and Meath made headlines before a ball was even thrown in. It was the first year of the open draw in Leinster, where Dublin and Meath had contested the previous five Finals. So when they were then were paired together in the first round in 1991, it was big news. Both camps knew they would have to hit the ground running from the very start of the Championship else they would make a hasty exit from it.

Sean Boylan: We had been beaten in the 1990 All-Ireland Final by Cork. That realisation with the lads that we had failed at the final hurdle and having to ask yourself the question are we going to be good enough or ready enough to take on Dublin in the first round? The things you had to do to get yourself up to that level.

Did we think we were too old? No, but we did think the legs were tired. And that's why we ended up doing all the training in water. Sonia O'Sullivan and Gerry O'Reilly from Dunboyne, who had run in the Olympics as well, were in Atlanta, Georgia and got these buoyancy aids for me for the team. 27 of them cost three and a half thousand.

We had to train in water because their joints were perfect and the ligaments were fine, but their muscles were tired. So training in water re-energised them. We started doing that training in November 1990. Gerry McEntee had been away and I always remember him coming home and I brought him out to training one night. After we left Gormanstown he said "How are you going to face the people of Meath next year when you're beaten in the first-round of Leinster and people ask how training was going and you have to say ye were f***ing swimming?!"

But you had to have a certain belief in yourself, and our players always had that belief in themselves. Suddenly they got re-energised. Up until three weeks before the first round against Dublin, all of our training was done in water.

I had gotten the idea because I'd read about Joan Benoit who won the gold medal in the women's marathon at the Los Angeles Olympics. Six weeks before that she had had an operation on her knee and did all her training in water. It was only 11 days before the race that she put her foot on the track for the first time, and she won the gold. At that point my thinking was that every year you had to learn something different. It wasn't about gaining a new edge, it was just about getting yourself right.

Liam Hayes: The draw came out early if I remember correctly. I remember training with Meath in late 1990 and hearing that we'd drawn Dublin for '91. We definitely knew months in advance and it was a shock to the system because were so used to meeting them in Leinster Finals. It was like, "F**k, the first round of the Leinster Championship, that means everything has changed". It meant we had to be ready on day one and we wouldn't get time to warm up.

The Leinster Finals were always traditionally at the end of July so you had a good two months of summer to get a lot of challenge matches under your belts and then get ready for Dublin. So for both teams it was a massive change.

Where it really hit home with me was that as captain I felt the pressure enormously. In the weeks counting down to the match, I was panicking, definitely, at the state of the team and our preparations. Not Sean's preparations, he had done everything has he always did, but I was panicking at the mindset of some of the older lads.

I felt they were just too relaxed. I had an awful row with Colm O'Rourke maybe ten days before the match. It was our final warm-up game in training and Colm was playing so badly he was on the 'B' team and he was marking Mick Lyons. The two of them were having a chat and I saw the two of them having a chat and in the middle of the warm-up game I just laid into the two of them. And when we got back to the dressing-room I laid into Colm again.

It was just the pure pressure of the situation because it was all new to us. You were counting down to Dublin and you could literally be out of the Championship on Day One so it was massive pressure even before we played the four games.

The general perception of the four-match 1991 series between Meath and Dublin hasn’t changed over the course of the past 25 years. Most people would agree that Dublin played the better football over the four matches, but couldn’t quite kill of a Meath team that simply refused to be beaten. In three of the four matches Dublin opened up leads of five points or more, but each time they were reeled back in.

Paddy Cullen: When I think of the first match, the ball hopped over the bar for an equalising point. I shouldn't be mentioning names here, but it is 25 years, so what the hell. Mick Deegan was soloing with the ball towards the Hogan Stand, all he has to do is kick it up into the upper deck, he solos with the ball, and it gets tipped away. Gillick gets the ball, he is over by the Hogan Stand, he boots the ball in, and it bounces in the square and over the bar. It could have gone into the net, which would have been worse, but it bounced over the bar and that was how they drew that match.

In the second match, I keep mentioning names but he won't mind, Vinny Murphy, a great man, I had great time for Vinny Murphy. He got through with the ball in the last minute, all we needed was a point, just fist it over the bar, Vinny. I asked him afterwards, and he said "Paddy, when I see the goal, I go for it." He went for it and the keeper blocked it and it was literally the kick-out and the game was over. So we missed out there too.

In the third game, Paul Clarke had the ball, we had worked the ball up the field very well, just needed a point and the game was over, and Clarke was about 35 yards and Paul was fairly accurate but it went wide. And the fourth game, it was full of excitement, there was the penalty and Mick Lyons was inside the square and you didn't know who was taking the penalty and we missed the penalty and we still led by six points with 11 minutes to go. We were up their end of the pitch, game almost over, and Vinny could have kicked it in the canal and the time would been over but he was robbed and they moved the ball and got the goal.

In the last game too, Bernard Flynn beat John O'Leary to a ball, now we all know Bernard Flynn, he is not a big man, but he got to a ball before John got to it and it went into the net. I am not blaming John O'Leary. I was a goalkeeper myself and we all know my incidents in the past, but those little things that happened. When you look back on them and you think if only...if only he had kicked it into the stand, if only he had kicked it into the canal. If only.

Liam Hayes: It was strange for us because we weren't playing well. You'd think after four games you'd hit your stride at some stage whereas Dublin were the superior and better team in each of the four games. Maybe not so much in the first game, but even in that game they did dictate it. It was strange for us because we were more consumed by the fact that, to use a wrestling analogy, they were on top of us and we couldn't turn them over. In all the games they were going four or five points ahead of us and we were holding on and then coming back. We were reacting to them in all of the games and surviving on Brian Stafford's free-kicks.

My most vivid memory of those four games is, and I can't remember which game it was, but it was pelting rain and I was standing about 20 yards behind Staff (Brian Stafford) and watching him take kicks from 40 or 50 yards out. We were three or four points down and I was saying to myself more than once, "If this doesn't go over we're gone," or "If this doesn't go over we're in big trouble." It was like we were always hanging on by Staff's free-kicks. And he put most of them over. He kept us alive and kept us alive and kept us alive. But there was obviously great character in that team. I mean there was massive character you couldn't deny. They were big men and proud men.

Jack Sheedy: The thing you knew with Meath was that they were never beat and they never gave up. There's no two ways about it, on the run of play or the way the games were going we should have beaten them in the first game and the last game definitely. But they came back and scored the goal which was massive. They just never gave up. We made lots of chances but didn't take them all. We made some silly mistakes and they hung in there and kept at it and got their rewards in the end.

Perhaps the most famous episode in the four match saga was Meath’s decision to travel to Scotland for a weekend break before the fourth match to recharge their batteries. Wives and partners were brought along too, the players were let off the leash, and it was as much a drinking weekend as a training weekend. Opinions differ as to whether that team-bonding initiative was the grain of sand that tipped the balance of power Meath’s way in the fourth match or not.

Sean Boylan: After the first match the county board said to me do you want to take the players away anywhere and I said we were fine. I was asked again after the second match but said no again. But after the third one I went around to all the wives and girlfriends of the players and said, "Listen, if I want to do something with the lads, would you mind?" They were like, "Sean, whatever it takes to beat the Dubs."

Anyway, I got it into my head that we'd go to Scotland. Myself and our sponsor Noel Keating (MD of Kepak), God rest him, went across. David Beggy was working all over Scotland at the time and picked us up in a souped up Escort and Noel, who was used to a big Merc, had his knees up on the windscreen. Jinksy was flying down the roads and smoking! Jesus, would you stop!

Anyhow, we head up towards Loch Lomond and came to a little village called Drymen and stopped to get a cup of tea in a place called the Buchanan Arms. After five minutes, I said this is the place. Ironically it was where Billy Connolly is from. So we talked to the people and made the arrangements and came home and got the approval from the County Board.

So we hired a plane and all flew over on the Friday. It had been non-stop between training, work, minding injuries and everything, so the very first night we had a five-course meal and a great chat afterwards and a bit of music and so on. We had to take the tension out of it, because at that stage there was very little you could learn about Dublin. There's nothing like the anxiety of the moment to soak away your energy and half the training I wanted to do over there was to simply absorb that tension.

The wise lads knew that the next day we'd be working, and we did. We went for a training session the next morning and then afterwards some of them went clay-pigeon shooting and some of them went out to Loch Lomond on boats. Afterwards we had a bite to eat, looked at a video, and had a chat amongst ourselves.

The next morning was the Sunday morning and for the next 40 minutes the only thing we did was move the ball just like we did at the end of the fourth match against Dublin. Up and down, up and down the field. So for Kevin Foley to find himself right up at the Hill end and be looking for the ball for that goal, that's exactly what we had worked on in Scotland so in his head it was the most natural thing in the world. I am in no doubt but that we wouldn't have beaten Dublin were it not for that trip to Scotland. No question in the world it made the difference.

Paddy Cullen: He took them away to Scotland during the week coming up to the match and Sean Boylan believes (it made the difference). But I certainly don't believe it. In my estimation, it did nothing for them because they were six points behind with 10, 11 minutes to go so it can't be, unless some magic wand or something, I don't know, came down on top of them. But he reckons that's maybe what did it for them. I don't think so.

They got a break, you get them in life, something just happens and you get a break. Like we got a break with Ireland last night. Wonderful, fantastic, delighted for Hoolahan. He gets a second chance, puts it across, bang! After that match, if that goal didn't go in he would have been slated, they would have tore him asunder. Great footballer, fantastic guy. So you get a break in life, in a match. We really didn't.

Liam Hayes: We took off for Scotland after the third game because Sean needed to kick-start it. He needed to do something so we went out there and we just had a mad, mad, mad weekend of training and drinking. If somebody saw it now there would be headlines. There would be just massive controversy. We were staying in the Buchanan Arms in a little village called Drymen.

On the first night we stayed drinking until three or four o'clock in the morning. And on the second night it was the same. We trained each day but Sean just gave us an open door policy to get everything out of our system.

We trained on a little soccer field that was at one end of the village on the side of a hill. We played tough matches. Lads were taking lumps out of each other. Lads had sore heads and lads were throwing up. It was the strangest thing. It was a mad, mad, mad thing to do. And a risky thing to do. Anyone looking back at it now in terms of the mindset of how athletes should prepare for a big contest you would say it was ridiculous.

For us, I wouldn't say it worked because we were as bad in the fourth game as we had been in the second and third game. But it didn't do us any harm either. It was just a strange event in the middle of this five or six week period.

When you watch the DVD of those Meath-Dublin matches in 1991, the thing that strikes you most about them is the raw physicality. It was a man on man contest in a way that today's Gaelic Football simply isn’t. The hits were massive and many were x-rated compared to what you would see in the modern game. None more so than when Colm O’Rourke was pole-axed in the fourth match by a two-man tackle from Keith Barr and Eamon Heery

Paddy Cullen: He got hit by Heery and Barr and it was a legitimate tackle. But they caught him from both sides. It happened in front of Sean Boylan and myself and I'm looking at him and I'm thinking, "He's dead!" He was lying on the ground and I just thought he is never going to get up. But like the Phoenix he just eventually rose. They carried him off then stuck him in the corner. I mean, the man was stone dead! Unbelievable! But it was a legitimate hit. Okay, it was a sandwich and he got a free, fair enough, but they both caught him on each shoulder.

I thought the referee, Tommy Howard, did really well in those games. 'Hopper Howard' we called him because he hopped the ball so much! But he handled the games really well. It was exciting stuff. There was hitting but it was generally fair. It was the way football was meant to be played. That's the way the game was made and he let it flow. Everybody took the hits. It's just a shame that Gaelic Football has now gone more technical the way soccer has gone technical.

Liam Hayes: Back then the game was more of a physical contest, more of a slug-fest. And there was a lot of bad blood between ourselves and Dublin at the time. We get on great now and we're lifelong friends because of what we went through, but there was a lot of collisions and a lot of big clashes individually and collectively.

We took Dublin very personally as we had to to beat them. We used to draw up lists of Dublin players amongst ourselves who would have to be stopped. Not only stopped on the day, we wanted to just kill their careers off. Vinny Murphy was a case in point, Declan Bolger another. Any big Dublin player that came around the corner, we'd say in the dressing-room, "Okay, he has to be finished off. Don't even let him get into his stride as a footballer, just kill him off."

We would set out individually and collectively to literally destroy someone's career by making sure he just wouldn't play or star. You'd hit him as hard as you could and lads would be queuing up to get a shot at some of the Dublin players, and they were the same with us. So there was that sort of mentality. You were queuing up. It was personalised. That doesn't exist at all now.

Jack Sheedy: It was the way the game was meant to be played. I think it was a better game. That's my own thinking of it and I'm still involved in the game. The majority of people from my era grew up watching the big collisions and big match-ups. You had Gerry Hargan and Brian Stafford; Mick Deegan and Bernard Flynn; Liam Hayes and Paul Clarke. You had match-ups and the match-ups were part of what really made the game great. That's what's missing nowadays.

Dublin played their best football of all in the fourth match, but still contrived to lose it. Meath looked dead and buried in the second half but a goal from Brian Stafford gave them hope.

Dublin had a chance to put them back in the ground when they won a penalty nine minutes from the end that would have put them six points ahead, but Keith Barr missed it. It should have been retaken because Mick Lyons ran alongside him while he took it, but instead a goal-kick was awarded.

Dublin still looked like they would win as they led by three points with time almost up, but then Meath conjured one of the greatest goals of all time when a move that started from their own goal-line ended with the extremely unlikely figure of Kevin Foley finishing it to the back of the net.

Liam Hayes: Obviously in the last game they had a penalty that could have killed us off but didn't. But the manner in which we scored the goal was miraculous. To get a ball on the end line and to work whatever many passing movements it was to get it to the end of the field wasn't something that you could ever dream of happening and wasn't something that would ever be allowed to happen again. It was miraculous. It wasn't anything less than that.

Paddy Cullen: What happened in fact, if you see it again, the ball was, from the time it left the Canal End, Mick Lyons delivered it to whoever, and it was delivered and delivered and delivered and then it came to the centre of the field. It was put across to Colm O'Rourke and then Mick Kennedy, our corner-back, I was saying, "Mick, take him, take him". And Mick did stop him, in the middle of the field, hit him hard, bang, right, free. It was a free. So it stopped, the movement stopped, perfect.

Then Colm O'Rourke, very unlike him gave a pass out to the wing, I think 15, 20 yards behind the man he was trying to hit. So now the motion was all completely stopped, they had to start the build up again. People think it went right up the field and into the net, it didn't, it stopped. Then a pass in under the Hogan Stand and it was worked up again.

Nobody tracked, there was tracking back to be done, it was the last couple of minutes of the game and people were tired. But there was a stoppage, and it continued on. I think at that stage we were kind of in a bit of shock as well. Once they didn't get a goal we were happy but they got a goal which made a difference. Of course their tails were up. I don't think our heads went down but we kind of rushed things a bit. So we made enough errors maybe to let them in and they put the foot on the pedal.

Sean Boylan: I suppose it's just knowing there's always time, things can change, and being ready for it. I always remember calling over Liam (Hayes) when Keith Barr was taking that penalty and telling him, "Even if they score this, ye can still win it. Start throwing the ball around like you did in Scotland last weekend."

Then in the last seven or eight minutes, the way they played was just magic. For Kevin Foley to score that goal...I remember poor Paddy Hickey interviewing him afterwards and asking him upside down and inside out about other scores and how this compared to them. Kevin said he never scored for Meath. Paddy asked him about any he'd scored for his club, and Kevin said he'd never scored for his club. Paddy asked him about any he'd scored for his school, and Kevin said, "Paddy, you're standing on my towel."

Kevin had a really quiet disposition. His father was born in the Argentine, and he had that Kempes look about him. That challenging look. He was a vet, and I remember one time he got knocked out against Armagh. I rang up the next day to see how he was and was after doing a cesarean down in Wexford at eight the following morning. That's the sort of character Kevin Foley was.

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After Kevin Foley’s goal it looked like the match was destined to go to extra-time for a third game in a row, but instead there was another heart-breaking twist in the tale for Dublin. Meath won the subsequent kick-out, worked the ball forward clinically again, and David ‘Jinksy’ Beggy kicked the winning point.

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Liam Hayes: It was strange. The winning point was strange. I hadn't been playing well. Over the four games I probably played the best game I have ever played in the first one. I was given Man of the Match and actually had a very, very good game and sort of carried the team on my back a bit. But in the second, third, and fourth match I was awful. My performance went through the floor-boards.

But I remember getting a ball from Mattie McCabe and looking up. It was really surreal because at the time I didn't know what I did. I got the ball around 50 yards out and I was going to have a pot at the posts, but at the last second I decided to play the ball across the field to PJ Gillic. It seemed just like a 10 or 20 yard punt, but when I watched it afterwards on TV it was more like a 30 or 40 yard punt and it was across two Dublin players over their heads.

Like, it was an amazing pass and it could have gone wrong. Dublin could have picked it off, counter-attacked and gotten a point at the other end. It just happened within the moment. The point went over (after Gillic passed the ball to Beggy).

Paddy Cullen: David Beggy, who I know very well, for him to get the winning point, it is like an old woman getting a point from about 75 yards! I mean, if you were to put money on anyone getting the winning point, it wouldn't be David Beggy, and we have been laughing about it since.

So there are plenty of memories of those games, plenty of incidents you can pick out but there are also incidents with Meath that you can pick out. But we dominated the games, every game we dominated. But you couldn't get rid of Meath, but Meath were like that. You couldn't get rid of them, Meath were like that back then. Not anymore they are not. But, back then, they were.

Sean Boylan: When Jinksy got that ball, there was never a doubt in my head but that he was going to put it over the bar. He could have gone for the safe option, but he had the balls to go for it. The emotions were extraordinary because it was like the end of a season. No matter what you did you were never going to hit the same highlight, and yet you were still involved in trying to win a Leinster title.

And, absolutely, there was sympathy for Dublin too. I was gutted for them. Because it could so easily have been the other way. There were no winners or losers really. Gaelic won in a big way. It was nearly incidental which team won on the scoreboard.

Dublin had one last slim chance for salvation when they won a free from the next kick-out. It was roughly 55 yards from the Meath goal and into the breeze. Jack Sheedy gave it everything he had, but it curled to the left and wide.

Jack Sheedy: There's other days I was capable of putting it over. Charlie (Redmond) was our free-taker and was gone off at that stage. Barney (Rock) wasn't on the field and they would have been our primary free-takers. I took frees during the course of the League, but I just didn't hit that one well enough.

Given the fact that there was a little bit of a breeze there and the referee said it was the last kick of the game, you're sort of forcing it a little bit. I hadn't kicked frees during the course of the game, but when there's an opportunity you have to step up to the plate and take a chance. If it works, great, but if it doesn't, then tough. As was the case then.

The final whistle blew the moment Mickey McQuillen took the subsequent kick-out for Meath. The four-match saga was finally over.

Paddy Cullen: It was a bit surreal. You know, I would appear to be laid-back, but I have a tension inside me. I really felt that we were going to draw again and when I saw the ball going to Beggy, I thought he's never going to put it over and bang he puts it over

It was surreal, yeah. I just remember shaking hands to Sean saying, "Sean, what can I say? 'Well done', or 'I hate you'." But you don't say anything, you'd be in a bit of shock.

Jack Sheedy: It was nearly like doing exams. You were working so hard to prepare and doing all the things around it. You were playing your match but you still had another exam coming along behind it. And then, suddenly, it was finished. All done, all dusted. You're gone, you're beat, there's nothing else and that's the year over basically. I think Tommy Carr described it like being a death in the family and he wasn't far off in that summation of it.

Liam Hayes: We were in shock to be honest. We had to go to the Mansion House because there was a function in the Mansion House for both teams and myself and Tom Carr had to present jersies to the Lord Mayor and make speeches. Teams weren't familiar with being in one another's company, so for both teams to be in the Mansion House at the same time was awkward. It wasn't great. We wanted to celebrate and get out of it, and Dublin just wanted to see the back us of. So we were sort of stuck together for two or three hours. We were all just in state of shock, to be honest.

Jack Sheedy: Yeah, there was a thing on in the Mansion House after that day. But stuff like that is only really a blur. I remember very little of it. In fairness to the Meath lads, it was probably just as difficult as it was for them as it was for use because they were being held back from celebrating their win even though they hadn't won anything, they were just getting past the first round of the Championship.

Incredibly, Meath also drew the Leinster Quarter-Final with Wicklow before winning the replay. They made it all the way to the All-Ireland Final after a Championship odyssey spanning ten matches and 760 minutes of football but were beaten by a fresher looking Down team.

*Liam Hayes: It took a lot out of us. It was a punishing schedule. I'm not blaming anyone at all, and we were brilliantly well looked after by Sean. He had a great eye for the physical detail. But by the time we got to the All-Ireland Final against Down at the end of that summer, Colm O'Rourke was suffering from viral pneumonia. Padraig Lyons had broken his leg, Bob O'Malley had broken his leg, Mick Lyons was about to break his knee in the Final.

I remember coming out at half-time in the All-Ireland Final and you had four of your best players in the dressing-room. It had been a long punishing summer and we did pay a price for it, there's no doubt about it. Nobody in those days was prepared for four games in five weeks or 10 games in a summer and there was a price to be paid for that.

The four matches against Dublin might ultimately have cost Meath an All-Ireland title. But the Dublin players believe they could have won the Sam Maguire themselves had they only managed to overcome the Royals.

Jack Sheedy: We felt that in a lot of games we were improving. We made mistakes but we were improving and certainly from my point of view having being involved in the panel before when we got to the All-Ireland Final in '84 I felt we were good enough to go a long way with this if we could get over Meath. At that time Meath were the dominant team and it was up to someone else to catch up and beat them and I felt it was an opportunity for us to do that. They were after being in three or four All-Irelands winning two of them so it kind of felt like if we did that then we were going to be in a very, very strong position.

The GAA itself was the biggest winner of all in 1991. Gaelic Football and Hurling had been put in the shade by Italia ’90, but the four-match epic between Meath and Dublin won back the hearts and minds of the nation and propelled Gaelic Games into a new age.

Liam Hayes: I don't know if I'm right, but there was a small enough crowd at that first match. We had been in four All-Ireland Finals and were playing Dublin in the first round of the Championship but couldn't half fill Croke Park. That tells you there was something happening in the GAA. There was something else culturally at work in the country. I think the attendances grew and grew and grew over the course of the five weeks. It definitely signalled a fight-back from the GAA. It just got such attention, such newspaper attention.

After the fourth match the Sunday Press had me write a first-person piece for the front page. That was unheard of. That would never have happened before. I had played in four All-Irelands before then and had never been asked to write a front page peice. You wouldn't get a footballer being asked to do it now. That shows you that journalists, media, and editors were reacting to it because it just got such attention. And people all over the country really. I think people just really clicked into it.

Sean Boylan: Things were never the same again. Imagine a big Championship match on a Saturday?! Years ago people would have been saying, "Ah Jaysus lads, there's cows to be milked!" In Gaelic up until then it always had to be Sunday afternoon, but so many things were opened from there. It got rid of the attitude of, "You can't do this or you can't do that." Afterwards it became more like, "How can we do this or that?" Nowadays young players are sponges for information in a way they were not before.

And people who were never interested in the game were now suddenly fascinated with it. I think it was the third match that Jack Charlton and Maurice Setters walked down Clonliffe Road on their way to the match. It was incredible. That's how much it captured the imagination.

The other legacy of 1991 is that once fierce enemies have become fond friends. The Meath and Dublin players were bonded by the shared experience, and to this day meet together regularly for social occasions.

Liam Hayes: We got some awful belts and we gave some awful belts too. It was a little bit like two heavy-weights. There had been a lot of bad blood before the four games. But those four games were amazing. It was like two heavyweights slugging each other until they collapsed in each other's arms.

There was a bit of that about it and it was amazing the way there was massive friendship between both teams after that and forever more. It was such an unusual even that we just really fell into one another's arms afterwards. We used to meet up quite often and would always be very friendly when we would meet.

I bumped into Barney Rock in the airport a couple of years after that and we were like two old friends meeting. We were laughing and shouting at one another and didn't realise we were at a public pay-phone. This guy turned around who was on it and said, "Would ye ever f**k off the pair of ye!" He was trying to make a phone-call and couldn't hear himself talk because he had myself and Barney in his ear like two old muckers. That summed it up. You'd swear myself and Barney played on the same team together for 15 years!

1991 Leinster SFC first round four match series Meath v Dublin

2 June 1991 Dublin 1-12 Meath 1-12
9 June 1991 Dublin 1-11 Meath 1-11 (aet)
23 June 1991 Dublin 1-14 Meath 2-11 (aet)
6 July 1991 Dublin 0-15 Meath 2-10