Character the key for O'Rourke as Royals come roaring back

There was plenty of time between the final whistle and when Colm O'Rourke appeared in front of the press after Sunday's thrilling NFL Div 2 victory over Louth.

The manner of the Royals recovery and subsequent first league win in over a year certainly caused plenty oif anxious moments for the manager and the supporters, but O'Rourke was much more relaxed after he had gathered his thoughts.

Despite the win, the manager admitted that his side were second best for long periods, but he was delighted with the character and attitude of his players to never give up.

"I've settled down alright. With 10 minutes gone in the second-half I'd say we were 33/1 shots to win. We were playing badly, Louth were much the better team, in total control of the game, four points up and it looked pretty bad," recalled O'Rourke.

"However, the lads seemed to find something within themselves that we have been searching for, and we were confident was there. A lot of our young players stood up and were counted for really, really well in that last quarter of the game.

"We are very happy with the performance when we needed it most.

"We talked at half time that now was the time for our young players to stand up and be counted. We are very aware, even with the relief and joy of winning, that it could have gone the another way. Louth had outplayed us for quite a period of the game.

"The satisfying thing from a Meath point of view is that a lot of the old traditional qualities that we associate with Meath seemed to come to the surface again and we were again inspired by Donal Keogan at the back.

"Then a lot of players who had been very quiet up to then came into the game and they all seemed to really get going. We had a great patch half-way through the second-half when we played good football, it was a great contest.

"We have talked about the fighting spirit quite a bit. Just because you are young doesn't mean you can't fight hard or be a leader.

"These are the type of things we are trying to develop in the players. We think they have great character and if you have that character when things do go wrong for you you will be able to do something about it.

"Those are the sort of qualities we are hoping to engender in the squad and it seems to be working. It is down to themselves now, they are taking responsibility for it, they are getting on with it.

"Even putting on three subs there at the end who had never played for Meath before (Brian O'Halloran, Adam McDonnell and Danny Dixon) they all made a real contribution."

O'Rourke's squad is down to the bare bones and the manager admitted that his current crop of players will be the ones tasked with the job of sustaining Meath's league challenge.

"We had another three lads who played their first league matches today. That was not part of a policy that we are trying to throw in rookies, that is just how it turned out," he said.

"We are short in terms of the team, we are missing seven or eight from that Tailteann win. We'd love to have Ronan Ryan, Padraic Harnan, Conor Grey who is unfortunately laid up in hospital (with pneumonia), Jordy Morris and James McEntee, these are the sort of players who can add a little bit of experience.

"However we are not going to have those lads in the short term, so with every crisis there's opportunity and in fairness to those three new players who came on today they showed why they are there.

"Jack Flynn has stepped away. He was playing Sigerson and county, he is doing a Masters and is under pressure to get assignments in and he felt that he just wasn't playing well too so he decided that he would step away for a while and get things sorted. Hopefully he'll be back with us.

"I don't think we'll have any of those lads back for the league, we will be looking for them for the Leinster championship.

"Conor Grey has now contracted pneumonia. He was pretty ill during the week and he had to have an operation in St Vincent's during the week. He is quite ill at the moment. I don't know when he will be out, he's not in the best of shape at the moment. He'll be in hospital for another week anyway.

"He's another midfielder out. Cian McBride did well today and he will get better. Hopefully we'll have more competition for midfield in another two months, but for now we'll have to struggle on."

That lack of experience to manage a game when an opposition were as much on top as Louth were for almost 45 minutes showed for Meath on Sunday and O'Rourke acknowledged it, but praised the players for never throwing in the towel.

"You'd prefer not to be in a situation where lads had to display such character, but at least the good thing about it was that when the gun was put to their head there was a response," he said.

"It looked at that stage (after 44 minutes) that we were rolling over pretty easily. Sometimes players look within themselves and find something that they didn't even know was there.

"We thought we had players with character and quality, we didn't worry too much about age, and I'm glad to say it does appear we have those type of players.

"Mat (Costello) had a poor enough first half by his standards, but it was a brilliant run (for his goal). He could have lacked confidence, but instead he took on the responsibility on a couple of occasions and his goal was just a fantastic effort.

"Mat is capable of that, he is a player with a massive future and I think he will get better.

"We did push up on them and started to engage with them much higher up the field and we started to get good turnovers. Every turnover we got seemed to give us a bit of oxygen and energy and they got a little bit disorganised at that stage as well.

"They started to play the ball around and carry it into contact like we did in the first-half and we started to turn them over. They seemed to run out of ideas for about 15 minutes and we took over completely.

"We had a lot of good chances in the first-half. We could have had 10 points by half time with the amount of chances we created.

"The fact that we were behind brought a sea change of attitude with the players in those circumstances. Louth started to play it a bit safer, play it over and back, whereas when they were going at us they created holes in us.

"We they started to play it over and back they gave us chances to create turnovers and I think that was the big thing. I don't think our style mattered that much.

"Louth's dominance was a big problem for us. They will look back on the game and think they could have won it by seven or eight points if they had taken their goal chances, but we hung in and we hung in and we hung in.

"There are a lot of faults in our game. We still lack that bit of experience and cuteness, we can't replace experience, but youthful enthusiasm makes up for a lot.

"Early on in the game we had a load of bad misses for points. We had five bad wides in the first 15 minutes when we were playing reasonably well and that seemed to sap the confidence for quite a while and Louth got very much on top and there were certainly times when we were under siege.

"They're things to work on. It is easier to work on those things when you are winning. It would have left a real lack of confidence going in to training this week if we had lost, but now that the lads have won they'll be looking forward to coming in and getting at it again.

"The win does change the mood completely and it shows them too that if they stick at it and keep trying to do the right thing that sometimes it does come off.

"The win is a huge boost. After we played Fermanagh I said our dressing room was like a morgue, everybody was so quiet and disappointed. I took that as a good sign that they weren't happy with the way they played and with the result.

"Today it is quite a different feeling in there and I think this could be quite a significant boost to them because there is nothing like having a game like that in your memory bank where you can say 'well we've done it already, why not again'."

With struggling Kildare visiting Navan next Sunday and winless Cork set to come to Pairc Tailteann on st Patrick's day Meath will fancy their chances of not only staying up, but maybe making a late push to challenge at the top of the table.

However, O'Rourke has not refocused his side's targets. Next up is Kildare and he is glad that college football is over and he has his players to work with for the full week.

"There are no new long targets. The target is to win here against Kildare next Sunday. We would love to have some of our injured players back but it looks like we will have no reinforcements for the next three or four games.

"The lads in that dressing room now know that they will have to dig out results now, there is nobody coming to the rescue, which in the way is a good thing.

"You wouldn't pick out too many as going well in the first-half, that was a great sign that they were able to turn it on when thing were going wrong.

"When things are going wrong for us Donal Keogan is the little boy with his finger in the dyke and he proved that again today on so many occasions.

"It was a wonderful performance from Sean Coffey too who came off a disappointing loss in the Sigerson during the week.

"We lost a few lads from the Sigerson, but the good thing is now that the Sigerson is over we will have 11 or 12 lads who have been away all the time will now be in training with us and that will make things a lot easier for us," concluded the manager.