Have we lost our Meathness?

The difference between a clap on the back and a kick in the arse is six inches, or, in the case of Meath football, two weeks.
When the Royals racked up 27 points on route to their Leinster SFC opening round victory over Louth the great revival was on, Meath were finally going places again under the guidance of Andy McEntee.
However, less than two weeks later and that destination is the same as it has been for the last seven years, through the back door.
The qualifier record is atrocious. Only twice have Meath made it out of the qualifiers in their last 14 tries (2010 being the exception when they won Leinster and therefore avoided the back door route) and on both those occasions they reached the All-Ireland SFC semi-finals in 2007 and 2009.
However Meath have not won a game in the qualifiers since 2011 and now they face the tough test of having to overcome a bouyant Sligo at Pairc Tailteann on Saturday 1st or Sunday 2nd July.
Last week former Dublin footballer Alan Brogan wrote (or rather had his column ghost written for him) about the regard Meath GAA is no longer held in Dublin footballing circles.
“You wouldn’t go so far as to say Meath were an irrelevance to Dublin in the latter half of my inter-county career, but we didn’t spend any more time or invest any greater emotion into beating them in the past few years as we did any other Leinster team.
“That, given the very prominent part of the Dublin psyche they used to occupy, represents a skydive from grace,” opened Brogan in his humbling opinion on where Meath now lie.
“Really and truly, after Boylan left and they began to suffer the sort of embarrassing defeats that have pockmarked an almost bizarrely inconsistent last seven or eight years, they shed a lot of their very Meath-ness in the mind’s eye of Dublin players and Dublin supporters.
“People throw their eyes up to heaven and get sarky on Twitter when pundits talk about hunger or belief, but I could tell from the body language of the Meath teams we played against at the back end of my career that they had no real belief that they could beat us.
“I have no doubt about that whatsoever.
“I could sense it. I could feel it. And when you have that over the opposition, they’ve no chance,”claimed Brogan.
While some of Brogan’s views are hard for a Meath man to swallow it is difficult to argue against them.
Former Meath captain Anthony Moyles didn’t agree with Brogan’s assessement that the Royal county have lost their “Meathness” in recent years.
“Meathness?? Did we lose that in ‘06 when there was only a kick of a ball between the teams or in ‘10 when we won by 10 points?,” questioned Moyles.
“Maybe, just maybe we were coming up against a team that was better prepared and was developing into a top four team. If we still believe it’s just “Meathness” that will win Leinsters or All-Irelands we are sadly going no where.”
While Anthony’s defence of the county is to be admired it has to be admitted that the steel that used to get Meath out of many tough battles is missing - we are no longer the feared bunch of warriors we once were. We lost to Wexford and Laois in ‘06, so maybe Anthony was referencing ‘09 when we lost 0-12 to 0-14, a close run thing - would those games have been lost in the good old days?
In 2010 the five goals certainly helped flatter Meath, but then again they were fully deserved. That game didn’t test the “Meathness”, the will to dig deep and pull the impossible out of the bag.
Back in the day, teams never felt comfortable until 10 minutes AFTER the final whistle against Meath. Now if we are leading by 10 points with 20 minutes remaining teams still believe they can catch us - we have lost our Meathness, full stop.
Andy McEntee has admitted that unless his players work harder and battle more feroiciously that the opposition we are little more than an average side. He said as much again last Saturday after the humbling by Kildare.
Andy has been handed the task to reinvent “Meathness”. There are no Mick Lyons, Gerry McEntees, Darren Fays, Colm Coyles, or Liam Harnans in Meath anymore - the most accomplished and fearsome footballers ever to don the green and gold.
We have plenty of nice footballers, lads that can pick a score in an acre of space or nick the ball away with the deftest of touches. We have very few that will put their head where others wouldn’t dream of putting their boot, we have no one that will land a shuddering shoulder to win possession - we have no nasty players.
I mean nasty in the the nicest possible way!
We have no one that can bully the opposition. No one that an opponent looks at and gets shivers of fear. No one who Dublin or even Sligo will look at and think “how are we going to contain him”.
Will we ever have those type of players again? Maybe not. If not then we have to adapt and come up with a game plan that suits our player type. We have pace and brains to burn yet we insist on running up blind alleys. We have big men who are decent high fielders and strong in possession, yet we haven’t exploited those positives.
We have tigerish, tight, quick defenders, yet we seem to be beaten out in front to the majority of balls.
We have to adapt or risk losing all our aura of Mighty Meath.