Seán Boylan has spent most of his life turning herbs and weeds into medicines that benefit people with ailments of all kinds, notes An Fear Rua...

That, in itself, is an achievement that would merit commendation. Some might argue, however, that even greater powers of alchemy were involved in turning the bronze of junior and intermediate club level footballers into All Ireland gold.

Seán's father was at the herbal medicine before him, and his father before him again. Other people see foxgloves along the road as a bit of a weed with a purple flower on it, but the likes of Seán Boylan know that this plant is a natural provider of digitalis, one of the most important medicines for treating heart conditions. Then again, for thousands of years the Chinese - those inscrutable masters of alternative medicine - have known that nettles can be boiled to make a most tasty and nutritious soup. And some of the fanciest French restaurants in places of culinary excellence like the city of Lyon use dandelion leaves to decorate their dishes, not merely because they look well, but because they have beneficial medicinal properties as well.

Seán took a similar approach to building and maintaining successful Meath football teams over his twenty-one years as their manager. Sure, any class of an eejit can spot a fragrant rose or a dainty tulip in a garden and work it into an attractive floral arrangement for a table or a wedding bouquet. But it takes real genius to see that plucking a wild poppy or a bluebell may create similar stunning effects.

Never for Seán the easy road of picking the fifteen best-known players in the county and just sticking Meath geansaís on them. Instead, he patiently scoured the highways and byways, listened to reports from distant parts, and so his real forte was in taking relatively obscure players from smaller clubs - sometimes graded as Intermediate or even Junior clubs - and turning them into All Ireland winning stars. Using all his renowned skills as a herbalist, he was skilful too at blending new ingredients into an existing team judiciously, so that sometimes it was difficult to tell where an old Boylan team left off and a new one began.

While Seán’s association with Meath football is well known, not so well known may be the fact that it was as a hurler that the Dunboyne man donned the green-and-gold jersey of the Royal county. Much of what he learned on the hurling field he later transmitted, with notable success, to the football field.

In the end, hurling or football – or indeed, International Rules – it all comes down to attitude. Boylan always had the right attitude and he transmitted that to his players. An Fear Rua had the privilege of listening to Seán Boylan a few years ago at a meeting in Trim called to revive hurling fortunes in the county. He brandished a yellowing newspaper clipping from the early Fifties describing how a Wexford team studded with Rackards, O'Donnells and other stars of the hurling firmament had counted themselves extremely lucky to escape from Trim with a draw in a National League match. Boylan made it clear he could never accept the proposition that Meath hurling teams were fatalistically predetermined to lose games to counties like Kilkenny, Offaly or Wexford. After all, as he pointed out that night: 'They don't eat any better potatoes than we do!'

This is undoubtedly an attitude that will inform his approach to the 2006 International Rules series.

There are some of us living in Meath, not least around his native Dunboyne, who harbour the hope that if the great man ever returned to inter-county management, it would be as manager of a Royal inter-county hurling team. These people take the view that leading a bunch of Meath hurlers to win a Leinster senior championship couldn't be much more difficult than turning oul weeds into medicine.

For now, in the short term, Seán has chosen the enormous challenge of leading Ireland to victory over the Australians in the 2006 International Rules tests. No man is better suited to the task.

Originally published in the match programme for the 1st International Rules test, Pearse Stadium, Galway, Saturday 28th October 2006

Linked Articles:
Seán Boylan: The will to win - Review
International Rules "on trial" - Boylan
Boylan announces final squad, as Aussies arrive
Boylan - a real Ladies man
Boylan selection a "Win, Win"
Bite back in Meath football
The Trials of Seán Boylan
Meath: The Hangman’s Noose Has Been Ready