National League Division Two, Round Three. If this was The Masters it would be moving day, which is fitting because, at this stage of the campaign, Meath would want to be making some sort of a move. With club and college commitments now all cast aside, this is the time when the cream either rises or collapses, and to continue the analogy, so far we’re stinking up the joint like out-of-date goat milk.
While some of the pundits preseason predictions (the PPPs, perhaps another one to add to the GAA’s ever-extending list of acronyms) gave the Royalers an outside chance of a top-two finish, the majority had us as relegation favourites, and we’re being strangely cooperative in making theses naysayers look good.
On the opening day v Fermanagh, we did our best impression of the current Chelsea side. With our new sponsors (Todd Boehly) looking on from the stands, we put in a dreadful performance from front to back except for a veteran defender (Thiago Silva) and a youngster up top (Cole Palmer) but somehow scraped through with a screed of respectability. On Day Two v Armagh it was much of a muchness except with no respectability and we were dragged, rather than scraped through a mincer.
The thing about this team is that our best feature is also their most maddening – despite the quality (or lack thereof) of our performances we know can do it. What’s it you may ask? It is the ability to cut a team apart, blow them out of the water, be watertight at the back, lord it in midfield and be clinical in attack. However, to do it all together all we need is the sun, moon, stars and space shuttles to align.
In other words, if consistency is the key, we’re locked out.
So on the back of all this positivity, today we welcomed our closest rivals (geographically speaking), Louth to town. While we still see the Dubs as our biggest rival, despite their average Championship-winning margin over us being almost 14 points since 2014, they still fear us, or at least we tell ourselves that they do.
Having routinely bet Louth for years we viewed them as nothing more than our noisy upstart neighbours, but losing out to them last year has reminded us just how much we f*cking hate them.
26 February 2023; Craig Lennon of Louth celebrates after scoring his side's first goal during the Allianz Football League Division 2 match between Meath and Louth at Páirc Tailteann in Navan, Meath. Photo by Stephen Marken/Sportsfile
And as everyone knows there’s nothing like a do-or-die battle to the death against an old adversary to inspire a team to pull a never-before-seen rabbit out of its hat.
(At this point, I feel that despite neither kicking a ball in anger for the best part of a decade nor taking part in the seven-plus training sessions a week, round-the-clock commitment that is being an intercounty player, yet I will continue to refer to the team as ‘we’ as owing to my birthright I’m just as much a part of it as those that do all of the above.)
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‘Like a Turkey walking on stumps’
The first half was a game of chess, in other words, boring, bleak and completely devoid of colour. While the on-field action was as stodgy as cold porridge, it provided the crowd with great material to bring new phrases into the rich tapestry that is the GAA phrasebook. While there were a few entertaining jibes at roaming goalkeepers such as ‘get that goalie a bike’ etc. the award for phrase of the day goes to an elderly gentleman in a John Deere cap and a Scania jacket, who used when describing a Meath player being dispossessed as ‘like a Turkey walking on stumps’.
With Louth leading by four early in the second half, morale was low. Whispers of ‘O’Rourke out’ began to circulate among the crowd, while others pondered could Graham Geraghty still ‘do us a job’. But change is strange. It comes slowly, then all at once. The deficit became three, then two, then one and all of a sudden it was gone. We were the ones with our tails up, making things happen and when we went ahead by one before doubling our lead with seven left on the clock the crowd was getting giddy. But when Matthew Costello waltzed through the Wee County’s wee defence before unleashing a thunderbollox into the bottom corner, there was champagne uncorked, confetti flung and flares being lit in the stand near the old swimming pool.
Photograph of a flare by Shane Stafford
Despite Louth having a thunderbollox of their own to reduce our lead back to two, followed by a goal-mouth scramble that reduced our nerves to zero, we hung on for the win, picking up a vital two points and bragging rights in the Mary McAleese Bridge Derby in the process.
Next up is Kildare back in Fortress Tailteann. Even though we’ve been burnt before, we’ll turn up in hope. Hope that it wasn’t just a flash in the pan. Hope that we can start climbing the table and start looking up rather than down for once, and hope that for once we will go home happy. But then again, it’s the hope that kills you.
