It’s a case of he stepped out, and he stepped in again for Meath ahead of Saturday evening’s National Football League reunion with Louth at Croke Park.
In essence, that means that the Royal County have reverted to the side originally named to take on Cavan nearly a fortnight ago. Meaning that James Conlon – who contributed three vital points against the Breffni men – keeps his berth at the edge of the square with Cian McBride dropping out.
Charlie O’Connor, meanwhile, resumes his place on the bench with James McEntee making way. In other significant occurrences, tomorrow will mark extraordinary milestones for the two spiritual leaders of the group with Donal Keogan set to make his 90th NFL appearance (89 starts), while Bryan Menton clocks up 10 less, though it should be remembered that (i) Bryan took six years of a hiatus between two spells and (ii) the Donaghmore/Ashbourne colossus debuted all of 16 years ago.
Finally, I know, like myself, plenty of people probably get frustrated that there are generally always changes to the announced teams come match days. But, in fairness to county team managers, in this day and age, is it not utterly ridiculous to have to have team lists submitted three – or if teams are fixed for a Sunday four – days in advance, by lunchtime on a Wednesday.
With advances in technology and nothing now dependent on clunky old desktop machines (he says as he’s typing on one!) surely there has to be some mechanism by which submission of team lists could be left as late as possible in the week.
After all, even without taking the possibility of lads carrying knocks due to matches being week on week into consideration, every county team will have a quantity of players attending colleges over the country. Meaning that training – or gathering might be a more accurate term – collectively might only be possible once before weekend games. Just a thought.
MEATH – S. Brennan; S. Lavin, S. Rafferty, B. O’Halloran; D. Keogan, S. Coffey, C. Caulfield; B. Menton, J. Flynn; C. Duke, R. Kinsella, M. Costello; J. Morris, J. Conlon, E. Frayne (Capt.).
SUBS – B. Hogan, R. Ryan, K. Smyth, A. Lynch, C. McBride, J. O’Connor, A. O’Neill, O. Martin, J. Scully, J. Muldoon, C. O’Connor.
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