O'Rourke happy to maintain winning run against local rivals

One thing you are guaranteed from Colm O'Rourke in his post-match musings with the media is honesty and last Sunday was no different.

The Meath manager almost skipped into the press room under the old stand. He wasn't exactly beaming from ear to ear, but there was a sense of contentment.

He was clearly happy with the outcome, but the method was slightly disappointing as he had been hoping for a better performance to reap the reward of two points.

"We are extremely happy with the result. Again, the performance for long stretches wasn’t great. I suppose the result is the important thing in the end," admitted the manager.

"The nice thing from our point of view is when we really needed to turn it on in those last few minutes we got four nice scores. It was looking a bit hairy up to that."

O'Rourke admitted that Kildare let Meath off the hook with their poor shooting, but he was pleased with the way his side retained possession in the final quarter.

"Kildare had plenty of chances and they kicked some bad wides. They had a dominant spell halfway through the second half when we were really struggling. They certainly could have put two or three points in it," recalled O'Rourke.

“From my point of view the response to it was very positive and the fact that we came back and got those scores in the last five or six minutes showed a very nice spirit in the team.

"We probably didn’t play positively enough when we had the ball (in the first-half).

“I think fellas were conscious of the wind and thinking if we can get a lead going into half time and come out with the wind for the second half we would be in a very strong position, instead of just pushing on and getting more scores on the board.

“Again a learning experience from a young team, an inexperienced team making silly mistakes, but again, they stuck at it, that’s the great thing about them.

"They held onto the ball well for long periods. Kildare had retreated very much into a defensive shell in the first half and they would have expected maybe that they would have come out and tried to press us higher up when they had the wind.

“It made for difficult viewing and it was difficult getting through them, but again, I suppose at the end of the day we have another two points and that’s what’s really important."

While the performance wasn't up the levels O'Rourke was hoping for he was pleased with the spirit and character shown by his players for the second successive week.

"We defended very well in the last five minutes. They blocked down all routes to goal, I was very pleased with that and we were a bit more disciplined too than maybe we were last week," recalled O'Rourke.

"We had a long hard look at last week and a lot of the players were the first to put up their hands and say, you know, I did something really stupid there when I should have done something else so when you have that sort of openness and honesty among the players it's a great sign.

"If you reflect back to this time last year we played Kildare and we got a bit of a hammering down in Newbridge and we were fairly flat.

“The whole thing has reveresed now and the other good thing about it was Ruairi Kinsella and Aaron Lynch came on and they got two great points when we needed the most.

“So it was very pleasing from that point of view. Again, the subs made an impact.

“The upside of missing so many experienced players is that people like Ruairi Kinsella and Danny Dixon are getting more game time and of course Michael Murphy and Adam McDonnell came on as well.

“We’d love to have the experienced players back, but the other side of it is there’s a lot of young lads getting game time now, gaining in experience and playing well when they are coming on.

“It’s a nice situation to find ourselves. We’d like to have some of the injured players back for some of the last games, which might be more difficult, but that’s not looking very likely.”

O'Rourke confirmed that none of his injured players will be back in contention for the games against Cavan and Cork, but he is hopeful that some might be back for the final game of the league against Donegal.

The manager also revealed that Conor Grey is out of hospital after a bout of pneumonia and was in the dressing room with his team mates after the game. However, he admitted that the Dunshaughlin man is still some way off full fitness.

Since taking over from Andy McEntee O'Rourke has enjoyed and endured a mixed bag of results, but he admitted that Sunday's win over Kildare was his best in the league so far.

He was also delighted with the support shown by the Meath fans.

"It's great for the players to experience that sort of traditional Meath roar and a big Meath support in Pairc Tailteann which had sort of gone away for quite a while and they're feeling sort of like they're getting value for money from the young players.

"It may not be all they'd like, or what we'd like, but we're building slowly. This is the course we're on and I think if we stick with it, we will do okay in the next year or two.

"With so many young players they're going to make loads of mistakes. We can chide them gently and offer them guidance and encouragement and patience. I think that's the sort of things that are working well with the team."

The youthfulness of the team and their lack of experience was also offered as a reason for some of the poor decision making and errors, but O'Rourke is confident things are getting better and will continue to improve.

"There were a few great chances that we had to break quickly and we did something silly with the ball but, again, it's very hard to put an old wise experienced head on players of 20, 21 and 22 years of age, especially lads that are playing in maybe their first or second league campaign," he said.

"It'll all come in time. We made a lot of mistakes and there was poor skill execution at times, but it will get better. It's getting betting, I thought it was better today than against Louth.

They're all performing well, they're all trying, trying, trying. There's great effort and great heart and spirit among them as a group."

When asked would Meath have won that type of a game this time last year, O'Rourke was honest in his answer.

"I don't think so. I think that the players have matured a lot in the 12 months and of course there's a lot of different personnel, I'd say there was probably only six players that started against Kildare today who started last year.

"So there's been a fairly high turnover of players, but a lot of the turnover isn't by choice. It was last year, it's not this year.

"It's the fact that we have so many players out, but again, the upside as I said, is that a lot of new players are now getting experience that maybe they wouldn't have got if maybe there were half a dozen others available."

With two wins and a draw from their first four games Meath are very close to safety and while peromotion is also still possible O'Rourke admitted that there is an underwhelming feeling about finishing in midtable.

"With five points you're probably nearly safe, but if you don’t get promotion and you don’t get relegation, spots three, four five and six don’t make any difference for us because we are already qualified for the Championship.

“We finished in sixth last year and we didn’t get into the All-Ireland.

“The only good thing is no matter where we finish this year we are going to be playing in it, but we certainly don’t want to be occupying the last two places,” he admitted.