Meath struggle after students pose some major questions

Silent supporters turned up at Páirc Táilteann on Saturday night and created an eerie atmosphere as Meath exited the O'Byrne Cup at the semi-final stage following a disappointing display against a DCU side that produced a high-octane performance. Goals ultimately made the difference with DCU finding the net in each half through David Kelly. Meath's Tom Walsh missed gilt-edged goal chances in each half. The estimated 2,000 supporters could easily be placed in the 'sing when you're winning' category as they scarcely raised a whimper at a time when the players out on the pitch really needed some vocal backing. All the DCU scores were greeted by a similar silence. The consensus at the end was slightly more vociferous. The same supporters had plenty to say then and the comemnts were that this was a poor, even brutal, performance. That fact wasn't denied by manager Seamus McEnaney when this correspondent put that suggestion to him before he returned to the dressing room. "It was a very poor performance, it was very disappointing, we all know that the DCU team is only three weeks away from a championship test and that they are in serious shape, but from our perspective this was a very disappointing performance," stated the manager. No attempts to hide from reality there. Three points in each half was an abysmal return for 70 minutes of genuine hard work. Even more alarming was a return of two points from play in the opening half from Paddy Gilsenan and full-forward Walsh. Gilsenan also converted a free before the interval while Jack Brady, Colm Begley and Kelly split the posts for DCU in the second-quarter. DCU's first score was a rather fortunate 15th minute goal from Kelly who saw his effort creep in at the far past despite a brave effort to save by David Gallagher. The opportunity arose when Meath full-back Bryan Menton was second in the tussle for a high ball with Eoghan O'Gara who caused lots of problems. Graham Reilly hit the post with a point attempt in the closing stages of the half for Meath and then Walsh fluffed his first goal chance after Gilsenan and Conor Gillespie combined to make the opening as Meath trailed by 0-3 to 1-3 at the break. Seamus Kenny replaced Donncha Tobin at half-time while first-half substitute Kevin Reilly (pictured), who replaced the injured mark Ward, joined Gillespie at midfield. Dean Rock pointed twice for DCU either side of a second goal which arrived when Kelly flashed the ball to the net after some dreadful defending by Meath. Graham Reilly converted a free before Walsh missed another goal chance which left Meath adrift by 0-4 to 2-5 at the end of the third-quarter. The final 20 minutes was as frustrating to watch as it must have been for the Meath players to endure with pointed frees from Bray and Gilsenan the only return on the scoreboard although Walsh eventually managed to find the net in the final minute, but the 'goal' was disallowed. Meath supporters will now turn their attention to the first round of the NFL Div 2 against Monaghan at the same venue on Saturday 4th February. Hopefully, those same supporters will offer more in the way of encouragement than what they produced on Saturday night. The defeat was a bitter pill if the expressions on the faces of the players as they returned to the dressing room were used as a guage. This wasn't what Meath were expecting, but then they probably learned a lot more from this setback than in the first and second round victories against Wexford and Louth. And if they were to pick a game that they could afford to lose, then this was it - an O'Byrne Cup tie in January. The selectors made one change to the team that started against Louth last week with Bray replacing Alan Forde who sustained an injury in that victory. Forde remains on the road to recovery and Ward, who hobbled out of the action in the 29th minute, will also face a battle for fitness ahead of the eagerly awaited Monaghan test. Meath were chasing shadows for long periods of the opening half as DCU moved the ball quickly - up, down and across the pitch. The DCU players worked extremely hard off-the-ball and were generally well placed at all times to receive a hand pass from a colleague. Meath attempted to emulate their opponents' in the handpassing game, but were not as fluent and frequently ran into a wall of DCU players. Goalscorer Kelly was a constant threat at corner forward for DCU and caused plenty of problems for a Meath rearguard that was under pressure for most of the 70 minutes. As the opening half progressed the Meath supporters began to urge the players to go long instead of trying to play their way through a DCU defence that tackled and covered as a unit very effectively. The long ball worked for Meath on the odd occasion that it was utilised, but too often the home players were too slow to attempt a pass and consequently lost possession. They were also penalised frequently for over-carrying. Then there was the two-man full-forward line, which sometimes was reduced to a one-man full-forward line, and, at times, it was an absent full-forward line. Walsh spent more time out around midfield than in the vicinity of the DCU square and with Tobin also deployed as an extra defender in the opening half, it meant that there was often only Gilsenan inside the DCU 20-metre line. That meant there was really no point in playing the long ball into the corners. Instead, we got a lot of condensed play in which Meath were bullied out of possession by a physically strong DCU side in which Dublin's Jonathan Cooper was the fulcrum at centre-back. It was as if Meath were intimidated into the way DCU wanted to play the game. The Royal County players were unable to impose themselves sufficiently. There was no one to put in a genuinely hard and legitmate tackle. There was evidence of that early in the second-half when Dublin's Paul Flynn actually hit two Meath players across the face in the guise of tackling for the ball. He got away with it. Soon after Bray received a yellow card for reacting to Cooper's attempts to get his jersey, the Dubliner really tested the fabric of the jersey and the referee took the easy option and issued a yellow card to each player. Plenty to talk about, but it's still only January. SCORERS DCU - D Kelly 2-1, D Rock 0-3 one free, C Begley 0-3, J Brady 0-1. Meath - P Gilsenan 0-3 two frees, T Walsh 0-1, S Bray 0-1, G Reilly 0-1 free. THE TEAMS DCU - M Boyle (Donegal); P McMahon (Dublin), K Gavin (Westmeath), E Culligan (Dublin); C Begley (Laois), J Cooper (Dublin), J McCarthy (Dublin); F O Curraoin (Galway), N Collins (Roscommon); G Sweeney (Dublin), D Rock (Dublin), F O'Shea (Cork); J Brady (Cavan), E O'Gara (Dublin), D Kelly (Sligo). Subs - P Flynn (Dublin) for O'Shea 23 mins, D Keenan (Roscommon) for Sweeney 56m, C Cafferky (Roscommon) for Culligan 57m, P Dooney (Monaghan) for Cooper 64m, D Smith (Roscommon) for Kelly 67m. Meath - David Gallagher; Gary O'Brien, Bryan Menton, Mickey Burke; Cormac McGuinness, Shane McAnarney, Chris O'Connor; Mark Ward, Conor Gillespie; Brian Meade, Graham Reilly, Donncha Tobin; Paddy Gilsenan, Tom Walsh, Stephen Bray. Subs - Kevin Reilly for Ward 29 mins, Seamus Kenny for Tobin half-time, Ciaran Lenehan for McGuinness 47m, Darragh Smyth for Gillespie 60m REFEREE Derek Fahy (Longford).