Royals ready to rumble

With the Christmas dinner well and truly digested and the New Year celebrations set to be low key, Meath will begin their assault for provincial and national honours in the humble surrounds of Geraldines GAA club, Dundalk when Eamonn O'Brien's depleted charges take on Louth in an SF challenge, 2.30. O'Brien will be without several key players for varying reasons. A number of the players are taking the early weeks of the year to go on holidays, while others are ruled out because of their college allegiances or injury. However, it has always been O'Brien's intentions to use the O'Byrne Cup to experiment. "We will be using the O'Byrne Cup to test players and try a few different things. We have had a couple of trial matches and have seen a few matches towards the end of the championship. We have up to 40 players doing a bit of training on their own for the last couple of weeks," the manager told the Meath Chronicle last week. "We won't have a few lads. Brian Farrell and Caoimhin King are away, Kevin Reilly is injured, Shane McAnarney is getting married, there is also a few of the established players away for the first couple of weeks and some of the panel are tied up with their college teams. "We will be using a lot of the players that impressed in the trial matches and we will be mixing them with players that are on the panel already." Although the GAA's inter-county collective training ban is still in force, O'Brien has a panel selected and involved in individual activities in preparation for the opening round of the O'Byrne Cup against Longford at Pearse Park on Sunday, 10th January, 2.0. Next Sunday at the Haggardstown venue will be the first opportunity for the management team along with new trainer Sean Kelly to have a look at the panel since last August's All-Ireland SFC semi-final defeat by Kerry. O'Brien is pleased with the way the trial matches went at Dunganny earlier this month and he is looking forward to getting back into action. However, the manager does have his reservations about the application of the new experimental rules. "It is hard to know how the experimental rules will work until you see them in action. I don't know how the mark will work. If you catch the ball cleanly and win the mark, can you not continue on? Or do you have to wait and take a free? Also the square ball rule change is not going to give a goalkeeper much protection," said O'Brien.