The man of the moment might have thought someone had quickly called a meeting of the local cumann.

I'd swear I saw the Wicklow tealady in the middle of all the lads, keeping a close eye on proceedings. Could have been mistaken!

I definitely recognised the head of one Wicklow gentleman to whom, just in the summer gone past, I offered a few words of advice when he bumped into me on the sideline during my second last game as Carlow manager.

It was a Tommy Murphy Cup game.

We were winning, and he was shouting instructions and running backwards at the same time, when we collided. He looked at me, a little bit surprised I must admit, and went to march away.

"That's okay, " I said, "don't bother your arse apologising." And our conversation scooted downhill from there. He never did say sorry - though, hand on heart, I sincerely apologise to him now for any irreverent use of language.

Anyhow! Time for a speedy recap of all the interesting people I met on the sideline during my two years as Carlow manager. My team played 20 competitive matches in the championship and league. We won seven, drew one, and lost 12, and I had three fairly serious disagreements, with Charlie Mulgrew, Donal Buckley and Declan Rowley.

Even though I was carrying a yellow card (issued by my wife) for my sideline behaviour, I also came perilously close to getting up close and personal to four other managers who just wouldn't stop running up and down the damn line, and around my feet - like Seamus McEneaney, God bless him, that sound man from Monaghan, a great manager, and fuelled by those batteries used in those drumming bunnies in that old TV ad.

Donal Buckley's crime was that he let a great roar, at his Clare team, twice, and then a third time, into my right ear.

"Will you ever shut that big Kerry mouth of yours, " I asked him, nicely, and then not nicely.

I also met up with other men, like Tommy Carr and John Maughan and Mick O'Dwyer and Dessie Dolan and Liam Kearns, and we all got on like the best of friends? pretty much.

Charlie Mulgrew, however, had bounded onto the field after one of our players, Mark Carpenter had been sent off. I decided, of course, to traipse 10 yards out onto the field after Charlie, who was shouting unkind things at Mark who had been obediently walking off the field after receiving his red card but, then, funny enough, fell to temptation and hooked up as part of a sweet attacking movement for us.

I also made my peace with the Fermanagh boss on the same spot the minute the game was over.

Maybe it was just me? Or do grown men, on the sideline in every ball game, in every field sport on the planet behave like raving lunatics?

In Rugby Football everyone sits miles from the sideline and minds their own business. In Association Football everyone sits down as well, and if they stand up they've got a 'technical area' the size of a good kitchen table in which to go completely berserk.

In American Football the coaches and their gazillion helpers stay on either side of the field.

Gaelic football and hurling could do with the same crowd control, honestly, and everyone in the two games know that, at present, every single sideline could do with at least two traffic cops.

This includes Joe Kernan. Yeah, you too Joe! You're an example to every other manager when it comes to keeping cool and silent for long passages of play. But, Joe, that 'water boy' you were using last year, who looked suspiciously like a fully grown Armagh footballer wearing an Armagh shirt, and who got into a bit of argy-bargy with Paul Galvin in the All-Ireland quarter-final against Kerry, he's one of the reasons why Croke Park tried to introduce a scorched earth policy on the nation's sidelines last month.

Your 'water elephant', Joe, and the Dublin and Mayo lads who had everyone bar the two bus drivers on the field with them when they started into their mini riot before their All-Ireland semi-final, are just two of the reasons why our 'superiors' in Croker have decided that can not trust anyone, any longer - even those who are delegated to deliver H 20.

Kernan and his co-managers met up before Christmas, and sat down with the GAA's law makers in the last week or so, and now it seems that the GAA's declaration of war on the many tribes who line our sidelines is being retracted. The GAA, instead, is going to tackle this problem with a few 'pleases' and 'thank you's', and the occasional request for 'order', it seems.

Just like two years ago, when the managers huffed and puffed at the sight of an experimental 'sin bin', the GAA is going to put its plans for clean, orderly sidelines back in the filing cabinet. Which is a great pity! Because our sidelines are not only unruly, they are also quite nasty places of work. 'War', in my opinion, was the correct declaration by the lads sitting behind the GAA's big desks.

Everyone, from the managers down to the 'water boys' should be fair game - Armagh are not the only team using H20 merchants for a variety of purposes, including inciting the opposition.

As for all of the other persons on the sideline, the selectors, the medical personnel, the analysts, the statisticians, the chairmen and the secretaries, the flute arses, the fools and the ne'er-do-wells whom we see on the sidelines all of the time?

I'd go through the whole lot of them for a short-cut. The GAA had, and still has, every right to interrogate the role and the reasoning behind the whole lot of them. These people can not be trusted to behave respectfully towards one another. Even if they were on opposite sides of the field, like our friends in the US, one or two would still be capable of sneaking around the place!

The manager, however, more than anyone else, needs to be taken by the hand and removed from the sideline.

The GAA should stop taking advice and direction from its big name bainisteoirs. Listen to them, certainly. But the GAA should not be greatly influenced by them, and certainly never guided by them.

The 'sin bin', for instance, was one of the greatest losses the modern games have suffered. It would have transformed the games, virtually overnight, but, alas, the bainisteoirs (who have strange things going in their brains at the best of times) said 'No'.

I'm very serious, the GAA should take its managers by their hands and lead them up into a place in the stands.

And if there is not a place in the fancy new grounds which the GAA is building all over the country, then the association should create dedicated and protected structures (removed from the general public, of course) for our managers and their helpers to do their work in peace.

Yeah, they'll jump up and down, and shout and roar at the very mention of it, but once it's done, once they are in their glass boxes with state-of-the-art communication, they'll calm down.

They'll be happier. They'll be better at what they do. It will be good for their hearts and their health, and it will also be a move towards making Gaelic football and hurling look somewhat like civilised sporting endeavours.