LEINSTER SFC MEATH v DUBLIN:THE SKY blue avalanche is coming so a little focus on Meath right now is no harm. Last night rookie manager Eamon O'Brien picked his first championship team. It is littered with men who attained heroic status in 2007 before being pilloried 12 months later.
So can the real Meath football team please stand up?
“I think when they won the league and reached the All-Ireland semi-final in 2007 is a better reflection of the present team than what happened in 2008,” says Dudley Farrell, Colm Coyle’s chief lieutenant in the previous regime that stepped down en bloc after the shock defeats to Wexford and Limerick last year.
“2007 and 2008 were so dramatically different campaigns and the current team probably falls somewhere in between them in terms of potential, but certainly closer to 2007.
“Last year we were cruising at half-time against Wexford before the wheels fell off. And then it becomes a case of confidence. You are either up or down. It has a big impact on any team.”
To call O’Brien a rookie is also somewhat misguided. A significant figure during the Seán Boylan days, he has introduced one of the old herbalist’s’ tried and trusted formulas to the current group.
“Eamon trained under the best and is respected by the players,” continued Farrell.
“Of course, I’m not involved anymore, but I hear there is a great buzz around the camp at the minute.”
Farrell should know, as his son Brian remains an integral part of the attack despite the arrival of several defenders on to his patch.
Current selector Donal Curtis was once a defender, so too was Graham Geraghty, as was the man who kicked the winning point in the 1996 All-Ireland final, Brendan Reilly.
The shrewdness to convert natural defenders into rapier forwards was a significant ingredient in Meath’s success under Boylan and O’Brien has displayed similar tactical cleverness by shifting Shane McInerney and Caoimhim King this season.
“The way the game has gone there is regularly more than six defenders back behind the ball,” Farrell notes of Meath tactics during the league and probable style this Sunday against Dublin. “I’d imagine Shane McInerney will be dropping deep between the midfield and half-back line.”
For many outside of the closest Dublin circles, the dropping of Ciarán Whelan, Shane Ryan, Bryan Cullen and Jason Sherlock comes as a shock. Perhaps it is the ingrained mistrust of their southern-border neighbours due to generations of heated football rivalry, but Farrell remains unconvinced by Pat Gilroy’s starting XV. In fact, he smells a rat.
“I find it very hard to see no Shane Ryan, Jason Sherlock, Ciarán Whelan and Bryan Cullen taking the field. I think there is more to it than meets the eye.”
Regardless of selection, he, like many in Meath, are quietly confidant that 5/2 odds can yield a tidy profit for those travelling back over the county line come Sunday evening.
“Leinster is no good to Dublin anymore. They need the major silverware now. We’re a long time without a Leinster championship title and the best time to catch Dublin is early on. I think Meath will sneak it.”
Ticket sales for Sunday’s Leinster championship quarter-final in Croke Park between the counties have reached 50,000.
Tickets are still available from Croke Park, the Leinster Council and other usual outlets while the walk-up crowd can go to the ticket stall on Dorset Street between 11am and 4pm tomorrow and from noon Sunday.
A crowd of 65,000 is expected to attend the double header that features the historic hurling curtain-raiser between Antrim and Dublin.
