Promotion is the main aim of the game

Second season syndrome is a curse that often follows a successful first campaign in charge, but Meath manager Andy McEntee will be hoping his second year in charge will bring some consistency and ultimately lead to promotion from NFL Div 2.

After a relatively successful pre-season campaign that saw Meath reach the O’Byrne Cup final, which will be played on the free weekend of 17th/18th February, and get valuable game time into 34 players McEntee has one target on his mind and that is to achieve the elusive promotion to Div 1 that has evaded Meath for many years.
Since coming back up to Div 2 after spending 2013 in Div 3 Meath have knocked on the door of promotion to the top flight on three occasions, missing out by just two points behind Donegal and Monaghan in 2014, on head-to-head results against Roscommon a year later and by a point behind Kildare last year.
It has been an incredibly frustrating division for Meath over the last four years and McEntee is under no illusions that this year’s campaign is going to be equally tough to secure promotion from despite the bookmakers rating Meath as third favourite for the title, but the manager is confident his side can reach their goals.
“Promotion is definitely the aim. We didn’t make any secret of it last year that that was the aim too. 
“The bottom line is that everyone in Div 2 wants to be in Div 1 and we are no different than anybody else,” McEntee told the Meath Chronicle.
“You need to find a consistently high performance level and hopefully that will be enough to get you the results you are looking to get. We need to be consistent. We threw in one or two wobbly performances last year and ultimately we paid the price.
“Consistency is as much a state of mind as a state of body, so you have to make sure that we approach each game in the same manner and you try to perform to the best of our ability every time we go out.
“We definitely have a tough start to the league. It won’t get any tougher than away to Roscommon for our first game. They had a great year last year and they will be hoping to kick on again.
“There is no room for slip ups, that is the pressure there is. 
“There is pressure on every game, whether it is away or at home you have to perform to a certain level or you will get beaten, it is as plain and simple as that.
“It is such a tight division that you can even have games where you do actually perform well and it just doesn’t happen for you. 
“We performed really well against Galway last year and still only got across the line by a point, so the margins are very, very tight.
“All the teams have a real chance, you look at any of the teams, including the two teams coming up, if you can get a run of games you can get a vein of form going.
“It all happens so quickly that you can get a rich vein of good form or a vein of bad form, you could find yourself at either end of the table very quickly,” warned McEntee.
With a half dozen games in the next six weeks McEntee will certainly have the strength of his panel tested, but the manager is happy with the work the players have put in and he is looking forward to the challenge of playing so many games in such a short space of time.
“I’m quite happy with the strength of the panel we have. It is always going to be difficult to try to pick a best 15 and I’m sure that could vary from week to week to a certain degree,” said the manager.
“Like everybody else we have a certain amount of players we feel are going to be regulars and then we are trying to make sure we have the best 15 on any given day.
“Having to play six weeks in a row certainly doesn’t make things any easier. With the O’Byrne Cup final now thrown in there it might give some lads who are coming back from injury or who need more match fitness an opportunity to get more game time.
“There are pluses and minuses from the hectic schedule, we’ll just have to play it as it comes.”
Last Sunday’s postponement of the O’Byrne Cup final against Westmeath because of a flooded pitch in Portlaoise was frustrating for McEntee and the players, but the manager is hopeful it won’t have an adverse effect on preparations for next Sunday’s NFL Div 2 opener against Roscommon at Hyde Park.
“It was a little bit frustrating because we fancied another game. 
“The weather had been flagged well in advance and we didn’t think Sunday evening was going to be a runner,” said McEntee.
“I couldn’t see what was wrong with playing the game Saturday evening. Given the accuracy of weather forecasts these days these things can be scheduled well in advance, but it is what it is.
“You always like to think you learn something from every game, so I hope we have learned from the O’Byrne Cup game as we went along.
“It would have been nice to have had a little bit more action last weekend, but as I say that is what it is. 
“The O’Byrne Cup is fine, you use it to try to get game time and get a little bit of a pattern going. Hopefully we got something out of it.
“We struggled to get a pitch to actually train on on Sunday, I wouldn’t say it was a weekend wasted, but I would certainly like to have done a little bit more with it. 
“Does it effect our plans for next week? I’ll tell you next week,” concluded the Meath boss.