Towards the end of Sean Boylan’s (first) glory-laden spell as Meath manager, his then charges played a Leinster SFC encounter in Croke Park on a scoring summers Saturday evening. Back when championship football was played when it should be in high summer. In said encounter they took on opponents who, although doughty, the Royal County should have had no fears of facing off against.
However, there was much debate and rancour in the build up to the game regarding the selection of a particular player on the Meath team and – more specifically – the fact that said individual would be responsible for policing the individual deemed to be the most potent of our opponents weapons.
Suffice to say that, sadly, from our perspective, the assignment went nowhere near to plan and, the player who would have been feared as likely to have caused us most problems did that and then some. Though I don’t believe anybody could have foreseen – and certainly nobody would have wished – the effect it would have on the Meath player directly at the butt end of the chastening evening’s work. He was quite literally never the same thereafter. In or outside of football.
You’d just hope similarly dispiriting experiences on the Alexandra Palace stage during the opening days of the 2025 PDC World Darts Championship wouldn’t have a similarly stunting effect on those who, up to the most recent point, had been possessed of some of the most burgeoning stock on the PDC circuit. Namely Cameron Menzies, our own Keane Barry and, most glaringly, the heretofore imperious looking Mike De Decker.
Now, obviously, greatest interest would have been in Duleek and Meath’s Keane Barry. Who, after getting past the obstinate Kim Huybrechts of Belgium with an admirably gritty comeback performance, faced the equally cantankerous Gerwyn Price.
I know, as Ruby Walsh said when he was asked about picking the wrong one out of Kauto Star and Denman, if my aunt was kitted out differently she’d be my uncle, but, if Barry had converted even a slightly greater percentage of the chances he created for himself the final score would have been a much fairer reflection of his contribution to the match and his overall quality as a player.
That will also surely be the reasoning in the mind of Mike De Decker after the burgeoning Belgian was surprisingly upskuttled by the talented but eratic Luke Woodhouse.
When one was beginning this piece, the travails experienced by Cameron Menzies were also to the forefront of my thoughts but, in the aftermath of the admirable Scot’s exit against the jovial American Leonard Gates, it emerged that Menzies’ father is gravely ill in hospital.
But here’s the thing, while the three players referred to in the preceeding stanzas did suffer capitulative defeats, there were positives for each player to take from their respective matches if they are of a mind to absorb them.
Yes, again with Menzies he deserves to have an asterisk placed beside his result taking cognisance of what was going on in his life away from the oche.
In a different way and to a lesser extent, the same could be said of De Decker. In his case, the way his season panned out was commensurate to that of a fresh, ‘green’ young racehorse who pulls far too hard in the early part of a race only to bottom out at the business end of affairs.
What doesn’t kill them will only make all three stronger. Which can only add to the entertainment value!
Fág freagra