It wasn't generated by somebody from Carlow finishing off a quiet few words of thanks and commiseration.

No, because that somebody would have had to have been me . . . the happy Carlow team boss. And I hadn't gone near the Wicklow dressing-room.

It's peculiar, and a bit surprising, but many things have changed since I was a younger man dressed in green and gold. Back then, in the 80s and early 90s, our manager was forever bobbing his head in and out of the opposing team's dressing-room. Sean Boylan was, and still remains, one of life's true gentlemen.

But other managers were also visiting our Meath dressing-room, in victory or defeat, almost every Sunday. We were all very sociable, altogether.

And, when I was Meath team captain, I also tried my hand at UN business on a fairly regular basis. Same when I captained Skryne, my home parish. Why, even after one of the most foul tempered and disturbing of Meath County finals, between Skryne and our greatest enemies of all time Walterstown, I pushed my way into their winning dressing-room to say 'Well done, and fair dues', and other bits and pieces.

On that occasion, I was only half-way through my congratulations when I was advised by the Skryne chairman to cut short my speech.

Things were heating up again, entirely due to my presence.

The pair of us retreated 'out of town'. Fast.

When I heard the round of applause next door, last Sunday, I knew Hugh Kenny was 'gone'. I guessed straightaway that he had resigned. And it didn't make me feel any happier.

Hugh Kenny, like Sean Boylan, is a true gentleman and an excellent coach, and in a more perfect and balanced world, he might have met with lots of success. He still might!

No manager likes to be up close to another manager's intense grief. Overhearing the applause and then hearing that Hugh had quit the championship early reminded me that we're all only one game from a quick and painful departure.

Most managers end their reign in either full, or threequarter, disappointment.

Thirty-four managers (Clare have two of them, and then there's New York and London, but no Kilkenny) began the 2005-06 football year.

Most are in year one or year two of a three years' stay.

Ninety-five per cent of us will end up with little enough to show for our work.

That's the way it is. Everyone knows that, and accepts that. We're all in the same boat. We're all trying to make amateur Gaelic footballers live the lives of semi-professional sportsmen. We're all alike and, mostly, we forge instant friendships over the mobile phone. We understand one another.

We share the same pressures - the 30 footballers on your hands are 30 grown men with 30 barrelfuls of hopes and worries, and dreams and problems, whether you're the Tyrone boss or the Carlow team manager.

Over the last two years, on this wonderful, energy-sapping, roller-coaster ride of managing a county team, I've made my share of new friends over the phone. We're all too busy to meet up. And far too busy to talk for long.

Too busy, even, to visit each other's dressing-rooms. In my first game as Carlow manager, at the start of last year's league, I dropped in to say 'hello and well done' to Seamus McEnaney and his Monaghan players. And after losing to Wexford in the first round of last year's championship I found myself in a near-empty rival dressingroom, with Pat Roe giving a radio interview outside the door and some of his players popping their heads around the corner of the showers to see who was causing the minor racket.

I haven't gone near any other dressing-room since.

And no rival manager has ever visited me and my lads.

I've met a few, new, friends here and there. Waterford's John Kiely is a good man to chat with, and happy to play the odd challenge game too.

This year, after one child-like squabble (almost entirely my making, I must admit) in the first round of the NFL in Ennis, I've discovered that Donie Buckley and Michael Brennan in Clare are two decent, helpful men.

Brian McIver, Mickey Ned O'Sullivan, John Maughan, Dessie Dolan, Luke Dempsey, Noel Dunning . . . all the team bosses, who all fought the good fight in Division 2A of this year's league with me, and I didn't have a cross word with one of them. Actually, my wife heard that I'd made a bit of an eejit of myself in Ennis . . . leaving me yellow carded early at home this year, and on the best of behaviour in my 'Bainisteoir' jacket ever since.

John Crofton, who oversees a Kildare team in the Leinster Championship today for the first time, in Croker, was the first 'new' manager I spoke with and met up with at the beginning of this year. For years I had played against John Crofton, but I'd never spoken with him. But, thanks to mobile phones and the need for challenge matches, we are now officially on 'speaking' terms.

John Crofton comes up against Kevin Kilmurray this afternoon. Kevin and I crossed paths when Carlow defeated Offaly in last year's qualifiers. We bumped into one another again, Kevin and I, in a corridor in Croker Park late one evening in April when the GAA's disciplinary committee wanted to have a few words with the two of us for giving out to two different referees (don't tell Anne . . . she doesn't let me give out to referees either! ).

Kevin got two months for his trouble, and his punishment is to be lost in the crowd while his lads are looking to win their second championship game on the trot. I was completely innocent of my charge. Honest. And there was no suspension, thanks to fair minded men in the room that night, led by The Honourable Bob Honohan.

But in Croker's long, winding corridors, with photographs and match reports from the past meeting your every stride, Kevin and I had shared the worries of the world with one another for 10 minutes.

Eamonn Barry and Paul Bealin, two more 'new boys' on the sideline, meet up in the other Leinster quarterfinal at Croke Park this afternoon. Barry, I played with for four years before he retired from the Meath team in a great sulk before the 1984 Leinster final . . . God, I find it hard to take when Eamonn Barry tells reporters that he wants to put 'pride and passion' back into the Meath jersey. How must Sean Boylan feel?

Eamonn had deserted the rest of us before Sean Boylan officially made Meath great.

He had nothing to do with Sean packing pride and passion into the Meath jersey, to begin with. He hardly lifted a finger. No doubt about it, he's a cheeky sod . . . but, good luck to him, he's now one of us, and he'll need all the luck he can get on a regular basis.

I know what Barry is dealing with . . . even if I have no great interest in having a good old chin-wag with him any time soon. By this evening, I think he and his Meath team will have avoided the 'qualifying bin'. After their terrific second half performance against Louth, Meath have the wind in their sails. They've got the momentum necessary to ease past Wexford, though whether Meath have the right players and the necessary game plan to win back the Leinster title looks very doubtful at this stage.

Offaly have an awful lot of improvement work to do the whole length of their team if they are to squeeze past Kildare. And a squeeze it will be, for either team. Offaly and Westmeath contested the worst looking game of football that will probably be played all summer long and while victory in that game was an early boost for Kevin Kilmurray and his able deputy Gerry Cooney, they will have to do an awful lot better against a Kildare team shook by injuries.

Paul Bealin and John Crofton might be the two managers immediately back on their mobile phones looking for challenge matches to fill in the next few weeks until the first round of the qualifiers. My hope is NOT to meet either of them in the month of June. They're two strongwilled, ambitious managers - and Wexford and Kildare, win or lose this afternoon, will only get stronger under their leadership in the next few weeks and months.

Me? I've got an immediate date with Micko.

Last time I spoke with the greatest manager of all time in this country (and I'm including all sports in that, A to Z) was after a challenge game in Portarlington early last Summer and Micko, having watched his boys give my team a good spanking, shook my hand and said: "Liam, you've an awful lot of work to do. !" He delivered the line with a large degree of honesty and sympathy. Good ol' Micko, decent to the core, but still a right divil, and still the most feared opponent any man or woman could wish to meet on a sideline.

It will be a great honour to share a championship sideline with him. And, when I shake his hand, I'm going to find it hard not to borrow a few words from 'Luke'.

Not the fella who wrote one of the Gospels . . . no, I'm thinking Paul Newman's 'Luke' in the 70s movie about the sweatiest, hungriest chaingang of all time, Cool Hand Luke. It's going to be tempting.

I'm going to find it hard not to shout over to Micko, let him know I've beenff "Working hard here, boss. . .

Still working hard boss!"