Eamonn and I were halffriends. We had spent time in each other's home parishes, and for the guts of a decade we almost committed to a real friendship.

We went to football matches together. We talked on the phone. During his first reign as Derry manager I once picked him up at the airport early one Sunday morning and brought him back to my home in Dublin where he slept off the effects of a flight home from the US. During his second reign as Derry team boss, Eamonn's partner Collette was a guest in our home while he stayed in a hotel with his team.

Then, five or six years ago, we met up in the Carrickdale Hotel one evening to talk about him writing his autobiography. Eamonn's niece, Maria was going to pen the book. Together they got through three chapters. Or, at least that's all I ever saw of it. And that's where our half-friendship was left.

We had no falling out. I meant to pick up the phone and talk to him, and he probably thought of doing the same, but neither of us ever did. Never met one another again, never spoke again.

I have an unhealthy attitude to the Irish funeral. So many people, worthlessly, needlessly present, all talking too much, and nearly all talking too loudly. I've been to far too many.

Eamonn Coleman's funeral was a place and time for real friends, and not hundreds of acquaintances and half-friends.

Eamonn had more than enough true friends. Anyone who really got to know him absolutely loved the man. He didn't need the likes of me. He had his family and true friends, and his team. The team of his which was led by Henry Downey. Eamonn Coleman loved the Derry football team, and he loved Henry Downey with all his heart. He thrilled at the honesty of his small centre-back, the manliness of Henry, and most of all the bravery of the man who was pretty much, like Eamonn himself, under-sized for a central position on a football team.

Eamonn Coleman also loved the Meath football team. That was his second favourite football team in the whole wide earthly world, and when Eamonn and I first met up in a pub in his home town one morning, and whenever we talked over the following 12 monthsto-two years, even though Eamonn had an All Ireland-winning team of his own, he'd still spend 70-80 per cent of our conversation talking about Meath.

Eamonn had been a non-drinker, with a broken marriage, working the buildings in London when he watched Sean Boylan lead Meath to two All Ireland wins in the late 80s. The Meath team of that decade allowed Eamonn to dream of the Derry team he would build in the early 90s. Eamonn Coleman, better than anyone I've known in Gaelic football, could label a 'truth' on a team.

And the Meath and Dublin football teams we have before us today, well, both would be easy meat for Eamonn.

In the week which has passed, I'm now going to be careful, however. It's a sad week, a sombre one, and a week for reflection, and when a man of Eamonn Coleman's size and make passes, it's beholden upon us all to be respectful of all Gaelic football people and perhaps on me to be more generous of spirit in my analysis of the teams which Colm Coyle and Paul Caffrey have prepared and selected for today's replay. Neither is it a week, or a morning, to be personalised in our criticism . . . that's how I feel about it anyhow.

Eamonn Coleman was such an honest, brutally honest, and hard-working man. And in his Gaelic football life he was the same man. He was a man's man, for sure, but the two judgements which he held closer to his chest concerning footballers and football teams, were headed by 'honesty' and 'bravery'. Teams which win All Ireland titles nearly always score the highest marks on these two fronts.

Teams which win a couple of All Irelands are, usually, 'ten out of ten' on these two fronts. Derry won only one All Ireland, in 1993, but they might have won a second had they not being denied by Pete McGrath's Down team in Celtic Park 12 months later, in the first round of the Ulster championship, in the greatest single game of Gaelic football played over the last 20 years.

No, we're not going to name names this morning, but Dublin's problem over the last half a decade is that they have never scored highly enough as a team under these 'twin' headings of honesty and bravery.

This Dublin team, in the summer of 2007, is no different. Half the Dublin team, I think, do not honestly believe they will ever win an All Ireland title, and the other half do not have the bravery (never mind the thickness and stupidity, which also help! ) to go out and fight to the death for one.

And why is this? Don't ask me, I don't really know. All I know is that Dublin footballers, in recent years, seem to show up for endorsements and photo calls, usually in Croke Park, more often than any group of footballers in the country. Why? The next Dublin manager, after Paul Caffrey, needs to get his team out of sight, out of mind, and out of town. Hide them away down the country, and let them live and breathe, and work their arses off. He needs to strip the team bare, sort it out. Kill it and start all over, if necessary. Kill off the very notion of a Dublin football team being of any worth, and being worthy of any success.

Meath have it so easy, in comparison, and for Colm Coyle life as a big-time football manager is a bit of a doddle. All of the talk of Coyler receiving a poisoned chalice from Sean Boylan, via Eamonn Barry, is complete nonsense.

In Meath, it works like thisf When things go bad, the supporters doze off for a few years and the entire county enters a mild form of hibernation, journalists and newspapers included. And that's where Meath football is at this moment, stretching itself. Nobody's fully awake and demanding All Irelands tomorrow or the day after that.

This lack of genuine expectation, and real, live pressure will not help Meath in this replay, however. I'm expecting Meath's performance to go by 10 per cent in the wrong direction, even though I hinted at the opposite last Sunday, and even though the return of Brian Farrell makes the Meath forward line genuinely scary for Dublin football fans.

Getting down to greater specifics, and greater depth on the different battles on the field and the individual contests . . . and still remaining respectful towards the week which is now ending . . . where will this replay be won and lost? Dublin are favoured to get a little bit of a stranglehold in the middle of the field. They will now be aware of Mark Ward as Meath's No 1 midfielder and they will target him more than they did in the drawn game. This could be a massive setback for Colm Coyle.

Dublin, also, might try to isolate Darren Fay more, having seen for themselves 14 days ago that the Meath full-back has the heart of two lions, still, but has the legs of an elderly, once retired footballer. Fay needs to get to every second ball first, if he is to survive at No 3 this season. If he fails to get 'there' often enough he might slowly die on his feet by the middle of the second-half of games . . . and if Meath ever need to bring Anthony Moyles back to the full-back line Meath will be left severely exposed down the middle.

In fact, if Ward is subdued and Moyles removed, this Meath team might be ready to be sliced up, by Alan Brogan especially, but also by the likes of the Connolly kid and others. To win, Dublin have to do this . . . summon up the raw courage to go for Meath's jugular. And stop pussy-footing around with a team which they respect, but which remains two years behind them in terms of team development, power, and self-belief.

The bravest team will win this replay, almost certainly. Problem, this afternoon, is that neither manager, Coyle nor Caffrey, is sure in his heart that his team holds the aces in this department.

Eamonn Coleman had those aces up his sleeve. And he knew Sean Boylan had them before him. Four nights before Derry won the All Ireland title in 1993 I had dinner with Eamonn in a hotel in Athlone. Eamonn had gone 'home' to a town he knew so well where he had good, calm people like the Dolan family to talk with . . . and he left his team and the people of Derry alone for a couple of days. Amazingly.

But Eamonn Coleman knew in his heart he could afford to do this. He realised that everything in Derry, after three years of magnificent work and play, was as close to perfect as it possibly could ever be. All he needed was to ensure his own head was perfectly clear.

We ate together in the empty dining room and even though we were only half-friends we talked and talked, more about Meath and Cork battles of old than anything else. Eamonn had a few dozen last small questions, and a few dozen old questions.

I went home and next morning I wrote my column for the Sunday Press newspaper, in which I started with an opening paragraph which bluntly, brazenly announced: "Let's not wait until the last paragraph to decide who will win the 1993 All Ireland title. Derry are going to win by three or four points, full stop, end of story. Now, let's talk about other bits and pieces we'll see in this afternoon's All Ireland final."

I had spent the evening with a man who had spent three years building the most manly and the most honest, and the bravest, football team in the country. Eamonn Coleman had built a team in his own image.