Filed For Meath Chronicle – 24/5/25 (Unused)
Little fish are sweet. Or, put another way, every journey has to start somewhere. No doubt you’re probably thinking the two Meath football teams in championship action on Saturday last had got their respective odysseys under way long before then. While technically correct, for both our minor and senior teams, new phases of their respective seasons recently commenced.
The thing is though, unless you were related to a player or mentor or prone to checking the fixtures page of the Co Committee website, you might not have known that Joe Cowley’s charges played and beat Galway in the All Ireland Tier II first round last weekend.
As bad as that might seem, it was only circa lunchtime on Friday that their quarter final fixture was learned of. For, wait for it, 11.30am on Saturday morning in Carrickmacross (against Monaghan). If you told it to an ass it would kick you!
You can be sure the doom mongers will refer to it as a Micheal O’Luich competition. But, aside from the fact that such a view is a flagrant insult to the young man in whose honour the trophy for the Tier II competition is named – the late Paul McGirr of Tyrone – it is an even more egregious insult to what is – whether the pompous like it or not – an All Ireland Championship and those partaking therein.
It wouldn’t be like the GAA to contradict itself, now, would it? On one hand, structuring competitions with teams of commensurate strength so as to ensure contests of better quality and greater fairness.
But at the same time, giving the said events little more than lip service by fixing them in such a manner.
These things matter to those partaking therein, and as should naturally follow with such being the case, any achievement merits acknowledgement. Albeit in Meath’s case, that is twofold – manager Joe Cowley and his fellow mentors Finbarr Clarke, Ricky Nolan and Shane McAnarney deserve the utmost commendation for rallying their troops after the cruel nature of their defeat by eventual Leinster winners Offaly and embracing the opportunities this other Championship presents. But, even more so, what it must be remembered are very young players, have shown everything you’d want in the prototype Meath footballer – size, skill, raw ability and a never-say-die attitude. And have had to and duly did display each and every one of them in their two outings in the McGirr Cup to date.
Now, if their escapism from a tight corner against Galway the previous week wasn’t impressive enough, they went to even lower depths of their own souls to extricate themselves from looking entrenched in the stony grey soil of Monaghan. Skryne’s Sean Smith had got the visitors on the board first before the first of several spurts of scores saw the Farney Army establish a four point lead within the first quarter.
However, Meath then found a bit of composure and scores from Adam McEvoy (two), full forward Smith and the third member of the inside triumvirate, Stephen Cahill had them right back on white and blue coat tails before the last named made his first highly significant contribution on the day.
Though a large amount of the credit for same must go to Trim’s Tadhg Foley, whose exquisite cross-field ball took the whole opposition defence out of the equation, but Cahill still displayed admirable composure to round James Mulholland for a ‘major’ which – though the hosts followed it with a brace of points – left the young Royals just about ahead by 1-09 to 1-08 as the clock hit high noon.
From the off in the second half, the Ulster side had another one of their spells in the ascendency during which Shane Byrne found Charlie Finnegan’s net for the second time, it gave himself and his colleagues a 2-10 to 1-10 buffer at that stage.
Ironically, it was the Meath netminder himself who steadied the green ship with a converted 45. Then Cahill hit his second goal, showing the poacher’s instinct when following up when Smith’s initial effort was stopped. Though again the pendulum swung. As a James Ennis two pointer and Tristan Nugent goal appeared to have sealed the deal when leaving the scoreboard reading 3-17 to 2-15.
However, such an appraisal would fail to apply cognisance of the fact that this young Royal battalion have that ‘something’ in their character that all the best ones have. Thus it was a case of cometh the hour cometh the men when their county needed them most.
Firstly, Charlie Gallagher instigated the rescue mission when hitting five points on the trot to horse the men clad by Bective Stud back to parity before another truly exceptional volume of the Meath encyclopaedia of escapology got the exclamation point it deserved when Cahill completed his hat-trick with the last play of the game.
With their own bit done, the Minors gathered en bloc to see the senior men achieve their own slice of history by becoming the first from the county to win a match in the All Ireland Series. Not that such an outcome appeared remotely likely for a lot of the contest.
After a very pedantic opening when both sides visibly hamstrung by anxiety, it was a point apiece after the opening quarter with Billy Hogan getting Meath on the board with a well hit 45.
Then, however, came the passage of play which basically defined the remainder of the game. With, firstly, Chris Og Jones engineering a 0-02 to 0-05 advantage for John Cleary’s side before patrons were left to ponder what might have been had Jordan Morris been fit to start against Louth when the Kingscourt clubman planted a goal made entirely of his own brilliance past mac An Taoiseach, Micheal Aodh Martin.
Indeed, it was a torrid afternoon for the Nemo Rangers player as time and again Meath rumbled his kickout. Which in turn enabled Robbie Brennan’s men take a somewhat unlikely 1-05 to 0-05 lead to the dressing rooms.
When the visitors had attained parity rather rapidly after the restart, Meath must have feared that (a) their first half profligacy – seven wides – would come back to bite them in the rear and (b) that it would be a repeat of the Louth match when at no stage could they put their opponents away.
Instead, what transpired was absolutely the best football of the Robbie Brennan era and maybe for a good while before that. With the defencive septet coping brilliantly with both the monsoon-type weather and the potential hazards of the Cork attack.
Then, unlike his bluffing equivalent on Pennsylvania Avenue, Bryan Menton showed the metal of a real Commander-in-Chief as the young head on old(ish) shoulders guided the ship into a range where the classy Mat Costello, the courageous James Conlon (two) and the charging Sean Coffey slotted the scores which gave Meath their bit of history, banished red and white demons and kept the summer voyage going for another while yet.
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