‘We just go for the game, enjoy it, keep it positive’

New campaign, new adventures. Meath's opening weekend of the 2024 LGFA NFL season was full of turbulence of one kind or another but they made it through the storm to chalk up that morale-enhancing Div 1 win in Mayo.

On the weekend that Storm Isha swept across the country new manager Shane McCormack brought his team out West for the first competitive game of the new era and it could hardly have gone any better - at least when it came to the primary task of chalking up a victory.

Meath's 2-18 to 1-15 win sets the Royals up nicely for the next big assignment - Dublin's visit to Pairc Tailteann this weekend - and they will surely go into that game full of confidence after their adventures out West.

Originally that game with Mayo was due to be played in Ballina but because of the broiling, swirling wind and rain it was moved to the splendid Connacht GAA Dome near Knock Airport. Sheltered from the conditions Meath whipped up a winning performance with the nature of the six-point victory suggesting the players enjoyed themselves.

That word - enjoyment - is not one manager McCormack uses nonchalantly or in a meaningless way when he talks about football. The game, he believes, should be about enjoyment, a sense of fun. It is after all a hobby.

Football, McCormack suggests, is not as Bill Shankly once asserted a matter of life and death. It's about people going out onto a playing arena and expressing themselves - and not just in games either.

"It's about having fun in training and the players enjoying themselves, it's about the players, it's not about me," he says giving in that statement a glimpse of his philosophy on the game. That idea that it's all about the players is something he seeks to emphasis during a brief conversation with the Meath Chronicle which was held a few hours after that noteworthy victory out West.

There's another important aspect McCormack feels is very important in life and in football - a willingness to concentrate on the positives and, he points out, there are plenty of positives about when it comes to Meath football.

On Sunday, for instance, he and his fellow selectors introduced a raft of new players to the senior set-up and the experience gained will stand them to good stead as the season moves on.

"We had a number of debutants on Sunday - Ella Moyles started as did Nicole Troy and Marion Farrelly who played a few years ago when Meath were intermediate, she's back in the panel this year so that was her first senior start." Newcomers Lisa Young (Dee Rangers), Ciara Lawler (Donaghmore/Ashbourne) and Tori Foster (St Patrick's) also made appearances as substitutes.

The introduction of new faces to the panel is needed because one of McCormack's most formidable tasks is building a new squad after a departure this year of a host of highly skilled, highly experienced players including Vikki Wall, Stacey Grimes, Orlagh Lally, Emma Troy, Aoibheann Leahy, Kelsey Nesbitt, Niamh O'Sullivan and Shauna Ennis (both of whom could be back) and others such as the injured Aoife Minogue.

That sense of starting again in all sorts of ways is something McCormack is very much aware of, especially from the players' perspective, in this his first few months in the job. "The players are enthusiastic about going places and they are a fantastic bunch of girls, they are hard workers and look It's difficult for them with a new management team coming in trying to implement a different game plan but it's clicking now. We had a few challenge games and (against Mayo) we stuck to our game plan and it paid off."

That game plan, he says, is about playing positive (that word again) football. "Our game plan is not defensive, we just go for the game, enjoy it, keep it positive."

McCormack has had a varied career so far as a player and manager. A career in which he would have picked up a lot of experience he is presumably now seeking to employ with Meath. He was a goalkeeper with Kildare from 2009 to 2014 and was the number one netminder when the Lilywhites were defeated by Down in the 2010 All-Ireland SFC semi-final.

From Allenwood, McCormack is employed as a lecturer in sports science at Crumlin College. He managed Wexford ladies football team before moving on to coach the Armagh seniors for two years. He took over as manager and guided them to a Div 2 title in 2023. He then, stepped away.

Recently married McCormack says he is lucky in that his wife Lorraine is "mad about football" just like him. She understands his obsession. Plans to take a year out of the game after the Armagh gig went out the window when Meath came calling.

"We're only married a year but when a thing like the Meath job comes along, well, I had to take it. I have great respect for them, respect I built up looking at them the last couple of years and how they progressed from intermediate to senior and won All-Irelands. They are still a great bunch. "

McCormack put a management team together consisting of Tony Reilly - performance coach; Stephen Sheerin, Johnny McGlynn - football coaches; Eugene Ivers, Ross Flynn - S&C; Ken Keogan - goalkeeping coach; Packie Reilly - kit; Mary O’Shaughnessy, Patricia Meade - FLOs and Cory Kennedy - physio. He set about the task of constructing a squad for the new season.

He knows there are expectations in taking over a team like Meath; a county that claimed the Brendan Martin Cup twice in recent seasons but that was then, this is now.

"The girls are aware of all that but that's in the past, they just want to drive on now into the future especially after last year when they were knocked out at the quarter-final stage and they didn't have a good league campaign. They just wanted a fresh start but it's good, it's good, positive."

Looking to this weekend's clash with Dublin, McCormack is expecting "a big backlash" after their 0-6 to 1-8 defeat to Kerry on Saturday, a defeat that must have hurt especially as the Sky Blues were at home.

A victory in that game would really get McCormack's reign up and running in style. Really settle nerves. The calm after the storm as it were.