Seán Boylan's team was involved in the disgraceful scenes during the 1996 All Ireland final and, as manager and someone whose words would be respected, he should have come out and apologised on behalf of Meath

A young, strong-willed Meath team was magnificent in 1996. At the very start of the championship that summer, the great majority of the team's supporters wondered if the low of the 10-points drubbing by Dublin in the Leinster final the previous year would be followed by an even more humbling experience. Nobody was sure if Meath would manage to defeat Carlow in the first round of the championship in Croke Park. Meath did. And the championship ended with two infamous encounters with Mayo in the All Ireland final.

Even though I had decided not to go to any Meath matches, and remained away for seven years between 1994 and 2001, I was once again a Meathman wishing my county only the best of luck and every success in the All Ireland final. Definitely, I willed the team to win.

I was still not so sure about Seán Boylan, however. He had been 'our' manager. I couldn't help believing that he should have been retiring with the final few members of his old team. And I couldn't help imagining him telling his new Meath team how much he loved them and believed in them – just as he had told us. There was, still, a maddening, quite ridiculous sense of betrayal by Seán. He was 'ours', after all. We were 'his' team. It was, for all intents and purposes, a marriage. A magnificent, solid, pure, passionate relationship between Seán Boylan and a Meath team, and here he was taking a second wife.

The 1996 All Ireland final marked an almighty low in the history of Gaelic football in Meath. As manager, Seán Boylan had always defended his teams, and publicly he had never admonished any of his players, ever. He never instructed a single footballer to punch an opposing player. He never advocated fouling or any violent acts. But, when the spotlight was on the Meath team after a controversial incident, Seán would remain silent, as managers always are.

In the weeks after the 1996 All Ireland final replay, Seán had the opportunity to speak up and do some serious apologising on behalf of his players. The Meath team was not necessarily the instigator of the ugliest free-for-all, which combined equal amounts of kicking and punching, in the modern history of the game. But Seán's young team certainly held up its end of the complete and near total disgrace which both teams made of themselves.

At that time, several years into my retirement, it was not difficult for me anymore to differentiate between the acceptable and the unacceptable. As a member of the Meath team, I certainly committed unacceptable acts, and I saw teammates of mine take action against opponents which, if the same action had been taken on the street, would have resulted in any one of those footballers being imprisoned for grievous bodily assault.

I'd assaulted opponents in my time. I'd been assaulted by others on several occasions, including one of my earliest championship games when I lost four teeth in a 'collision' with an opposing defender which also left me knocked unconscious and admitted to the old Richmond Hospital for 24 hours' observation.

Nobody apologised, to anyone, after any incident I can remember, ever.

As a Meath footballer, I never apologised and I never complained either. Thuggery, on a regular basis, was part and parcel of Gaelic football, and anyone could act like a thug at any time. Of course, some teams, including the Meath team on which I played, and definitely including Dublin teams and Kerry teams whom I played against, always had one or two full-time thugs on their starting 15. This was a fact in Gaelic football life through the 1970s, and into the 1980s and early 1990s.

Though, because of the wonders of superior tactical play in the last decade, and the vigilance of television cameras which keep a close eye on every single game of county football now played, outright and quite disgusting levels of violence have been substantially lowered.

As a former Meath footballer, and even as someone with a stained CV of my own, the performances of roughly half the Meath team, and also half of the Mayo team, in the 1996 All Ireland final replay was unpardonable.

Seán Boylan should have spoken up, on his own behalf, on behalf of the name of Meath football, and on behalf of Gaelic football. It was one of those rare opportunities when everyone would have listened to someone as honest and decent as Seán, and everyone would have had to admit something they would not like to have to admit – about themselves, and their instincts and their methodology of self-denial, and about the uncivil character of their own football teams.

The time finally came when this footballer was approaching the last few furlongs of his inter-county career, with the trainer Seán Boylan phasing out his old nag

Seán and I had been falling out for many months. We had been arguing with one another and quickly making up with one another for many years, but in the spring of 1992, just before and just after Out Of Our Skins was published, Seán and I had one or two differences of opinion too many.

After captaining the team in 1991, I started out 1992 to one side of Seán Boylan's chosen 15. We played Kerry in Croke Park and Seán had me warming up on the sideline for roughly 60 of the 70 minutes, and threw me in for the last five minutes or so. I was a substitute against Clare for a National League quarter-final in Ballinasloe, and came on and scored the winning point. In the semi-final, against Derry in Croke Park, I started and should have been taken off, but Seán had mercy on me.

Then, one night, a few weeks before the start of the championship, Seán sat us around him in the dressing-room and announced there would be two games the following week: an O'Byrne Cup game against Wexford in Gorey on the Thursday evening, and a challenge match against Cork in Bantry on the Saturday afternoon. He went around every single player, individually, and asked who was available for Gorey? And who was available for Bantry?

I knew, as everyone else did, that he was only being extra polite in asking the questions. Neither question was really a question at all.

I was the only person in the room to tell Seán that I was able to go to Gorey, but that I would not be able to go to Bantry. Seán took note of my availability on the list in his hands. The following Thursday, I drove down to Gorey from Dublin good and early, and I was the first Meath footballer – I was the first Meath person by about 20 minutes – in our dressing-room. The man opening the dressing-rooms was pleased to see me, but his head shook for some time at the incredible enthusiasm of such an "elderly" Meath footballer. He was the only gentlemen in the room that evening in Gorey who was impressed by me.

I had been waiting around for so long for everyone to arrive that I foolishly was also the first man in the dressing-room to change, and I was sitting there, with my boots on, with my football shorts on, and without any jersey or top. I did my warm-ups. Stood up, sat down, stood up, warmed up some more, and some more, and the jerseys were finally flung around the room to the starting 15, and then more jerseys were flung around the room to the substitutes and, then, I realised that the bag of jerseys had been emptied.

I still had no jersey.

"Any jerseys in the bag," I asked Pat Reynolds, one of our selectors.

"No, lad."

I opened my own kit bag at my feet and poked inside, and found that I had no jersey there, or tracksuit, and I had to ask some of the lads to my right if someone had a spare training jersey or a tracksuit top, or both?

Seán put me into the game with 15 minutes left. I had to take a jersey from one of the other substitutes before running onto the field.

The last time I had been sitting in my boots and shorts, and naked on top, waiting for a jersey was when I was 10 years old, and in one of the chapters which has been deleted from this edition of Out of Our Skins I recounted that experience:

"In the summer of 1972 I was 10 years old and determined to get my hands on my first Skryne jersey. I actually went down to the field with Gerard, who was playing with the Skryne under-14 team which had won the county championship the previous year, and seemed likely to do so again.

"The jerseys were packed in a large brown suitcase which was scuffed at the edges and sitting in the middle of the grimy cement floor. The case also
possessed a belly, as though a kid my own age was locked inside, attempting to burst his way out. It sat there, five yards away, and I sat on the wooden bench, reduced to a string of skin and bones, wearing my new Blackthorn boots, an old pair of Gerard's socks, my own white knicks, and a vest. There were about 25 or 30 jerseys in the case, I guessed.

"One good set, and the remains of an old set, a dull blue, with buttons missing and a choice of patterned holes around the collars. I aimed to get one of those. There were three selectors: Mick Ryan, Jimmy Finnerty, and my dad. The jerseys were distributed, thrown in a variety of directions across the room, and I remained perched on the edge of a great personal tragedy.

"Tom Cudden was pulling one over his curly head. Long Tom, who could direct an entire parish east or west with the merest swivel of his hips. Pádraig Finnerty – we called him Fionn – was brutally strong, and knew no fear, no fear whatsoever, and he had only turned 12. Paddy Ryan, Georgie McCann, John Ruane, Basil Curran – I sat amongst them in awe. Each wore a jersey. Colm O'Rourke stood out in the crowded dressing-room. Already, he walked and played like somebody who knew he was a household name, and laughed like someone who had seen it all, done it all. He was 13 years old.

"The team left the dressing-room and I changed back into my clothes and ran home in a temper. I broke down with perfect timing as my hand grabbed the handle of the back door.

"My mother asked me why I was crying? Mothers are great for asking questions. It was a Saturday night and as soon as I had poured out my troubles she told me to go up and have my bath. That's where I was, still, when dad came up from the field.

"He sat on the edge of the bath.

"'Are you alright?'

"I was angry, wallowing in the soapiest, deepest sympathy for myself. I didn't reply.

"'Those lads are very big,' he continued

"'I know,' I replied.

"'Gus McCabe is old enough for the pension, y'know?'

"I looked up curious, about to be impressed.

"'Is he?' I asked

"'Yeah, he's very old.'

"'Didn't know that.'

Dad tossed my wet head and left. I sat there in the cold water, a great deal happier.

Roll forward to 2008 when I made some enquiries about possibly becoming the director general of the GAA after Liam Mulvihill retired

When it became known that the GAA was soon going to be seeking a new director general, to replace Liam Mulvihill upon his retirement, I wondered for many weeks about the role. I then put in a call to my friend and business mentor, Peter Quinn, who was the outstanding GAA president in the modern history of the association.

"How's your Irish?" asked Peter.

We were sitting down in a hotel foyer in Dublin, and about to seriously discuss my intentions of applying for the position, but first Peter, who is a fluent Irish speaker, threw out that question to me.

"Ehm… not great," I replied. "Why?"

"It would help," said Peter, who then trotted out his short list of possible candidates. He had Christy Cooney, the GAA's excellent president at this time, close to the top of that list, and one or two other formidable names.

"All of them speak Irish," remarked Peter dryly.

I told Peter I could get some lessons and brush up on my Irish very quickly, and then we got serious in our discussion.

We chatted about Mulvihill, what he had achieved in his career as director general, and the requirements of the association as it looked long into the future. I told Peter that being director general of the GAA would be the job of my dreams. Peter told me I would not be the GAA's dream choice.

In the end, I didn't put in my application. And that's a regret of mine. Interestingly, I never asked Peter Quinn how much the director general of the GAA earns?

That's because I don't care how much money the DG takes home in wages and expenses, and how much his pension entitlements might reach.

The first thing I would do, if I was director general of the GAA, would be to publish for the attention of all GAA members my personal salary and any or all of my other entitlements through my employment.

I would also insist on the same degree of transparency for every single person employed in Croke Park and employed in any other full-time capacity anywhere else in the association.

GAA people, as the members of such a large and industrious amateur organisation, are entitled to know exactly how much money is being paid to every full-time person in its employment.

Out of our skins

'Out of Our Skins' was a number one bestseller on first publication, and Liam Hayes' autobiographical account of how Seán Boylan built the Meath team into the most brilliant and destructive Gaelic football team in the country in the 1980s and '90s has now been republished. The author adds extensive new material charting the story of the team's demise and his own struggle to re-start life after almost 20 years in a Meath jersey. The book is in all good book shops, and for personally signed copies visit www.liamhayes.ie.