Kerrigan traces roots of a Meath revival

GAELIC GAMES: NOT EVEN in Meath was there any clear idea that Sunday's big surprise against Kildare was in the pipeline.

Matt Kerrigan is one of the county’s most respected football people as an All-Ireland winner, a distinguished coach and now a broadcast pundit.

He enumerates the lead-up to the Leinster semi-final and whereas he acknowledges that the most recent match, the replay win over Carlow, ended with an improving performance, it wasn’t enough to convince that they had a performance like the weekend’s in them.

“If you saw them playing Wicklow, it wasn’t impressive. They didn’t score for 20 minutes at one stage and against a better team they would have been punished. In the drawn match with Carlow you couldn’t see Carlow winning, but had they got the margin down to less than three like they should have, then the injury-time goal would have knocked Meath out.

“In the replay it was much the same as in the first match – Brendan Murphy doing well for Carlow but then Peadar Byrne came in and got a goal (Sunday’s key score was his third goal; this in two appearances as a replacement) and that seemed to free them up and liberate them to play good football.

“To be honest I was looking for a good performance, a marker for the future. I wasn’t expecting them to win; they were short five or six big players – Kevin Reilly, Séamus Kenny, Stephen Bray, Paddy Gilsenan, and Shane O’Rourke were all out. They had four under-21s in defence.”

Where did it come from?

The league was a disaster and ended in relegation, which triggered a county board-led attempted putsch. Kerrigan believes that the episode is a significant influence in bringing about Sunday’s coup both in the manager’s reaction and the delegating of new roles that he put in place afterwards.

“In fairness to Séamus McEnaney, he fought his corner when he was under pressure. It wasn’t the best move a Meath County Board ever made to try to drop him at that stage of the year. I think the players responded to that.

“There were a few things that bonded them together. Firstly he got Joe Sheridan back from Boston and got him back playing – he’d been in and out during the league. He gave Trevor Giles increased responsibility. Trevor was a very clever player and his reading of the game is intelligent.

“He also brought in John Evans after he finished up in Tipperary and he’s been a major influence. He’s from Kerry and knows his football.”

Evans’s coaching role was initially controversial in that he had just resigned as manager of the Tipperary footballers, but his achievements there had also been substantial, bringing the county up to Division Two of the league even if they had slid back to Division Four by the time of his departure. Previously he had taken his home club Laune Rangers in Killorglin to the AllIreland club title. His enthusiasm and appetite for the game have made a positive contribution to the team’s development.

In relation to the match itself Kerrigan says that whereas he hadn’t seen the result coming he had felt that Kildare were perhaps more vulnerable this year.

Ironically traces of this could be seen when the counties met in the league.

That match in March was a watershed for both counties. At that point Meath had won their first two fixtures, whereas Kildare had lost theirs. It could have gone either way but in the end Kildare defender Ollie Lyons took the winning point.

“I think Kildare have been looser this year,” according to Kerrigan. “They’ve been scoring more but also conceding more. I remember in the league match in Navan, Kildare won with a late point, but it was high-scoring (0-18 to 2-11). Again on Sunday it was a very open type of game and Meath won’t find that space against Dublin.”

The style of the win also came as a pleasant surprise to the county. In place of laborious build-ups came a more traditional approach, helped by the outstanding fielding performance of Conor Gillespie at centrefield and complemented by the free running of Damien Carroll and Alan Forde, which found large gaps in the Kildare defence.

“Meath reverted to a Meath type of game,” says Kerrigan. “It was more direct, using the short pass sparingly to get out of trouble at the back. The young fellas have no baggage and no fear.

“The bench was also critical. Stephen Bray and Kevin Reilly will in all likelihood start the next day. Eoghan Harrington is a former first-choice player and Peadar Byrne and Jamie Queeney have both done very well coming into matches and have experience. Young lads aren’t great as impact subs.”

And now the final: the first Dublin-Meath pairing at that stage since 2001 and they haven’t lost one since 1995? Kerrigan remains cautious. “Meath are capable of turning over anybody but can they repeat that against Dublin?”