'We were like a rabbit in headlights from the off'

Meath will reflect on their 2024 intermediate campaign as a year of learning and progression, writes Tom Gannon.

While there are still several players involved who featured in last year’s All-Ireland final, Meath had to deal with plenty of personnel changes to the team that was defeated by Derry in last years final replay in Clones.

Despite not quite reaching the heights of 12 months ago, credit is due to joint managers Gary Cole and Tom Moloney for the progress that they have made with this relatively inexperienced side. Meath have shown fantastic potential, especially in the early rounds of the group stage of the All-Ireland series.

That progress unfortunately was halted by a sharp Offaly side on Saturday afternoon who made light work of Meath’s efforts in Semple Stadium. A dejected Gary Cole spoke of his disappointment with how Meath started the contest.

“We had a terrible bad start. We were like a rabbit in headlights from the off. We were very slow to react to everything. Offaly were a yard ahead of us for every ball and we paid the price for it," said Cole.

"We made some silly mistakes as well. We have struggled at the start of the games this year to do the basics right and it came back to haunt us in a big way today. When you go down by 10 or 11 points, it’s a long way back. We are mostly disappointed in the way we started the game” said the joint Meath manager.

Cole also recognised that his side struggled to cope with Clodagh Leahy and Grace Teehan in particular. The midfielder and wing forward combined to score an impressive tally of 1-13.

“The second half was better but we were beaten by a better team. Clodagh Leahy and Grace Teehan were hard to handle. Leahy couldn’t miss from the deadball either so we couldn’t give away any frees.”

Meath battled hard in periods of the game particularly in the third quarter. However, Cole admits that you have to play well throughout the game if you are going to have any chance of beating a team like Offaly.

“When we started to play a bit, we gave them a little bit of a fright. You could see their manager was getting quite animated on the sideline at one stage. It wasn’t enough though. We weren’t at the races. You have to play from the first minute at this level. If you are not on it throughout, a team like Offaly will put you away very easily.”

Cole was delighted with the contribution that some of the younger members of the panel made on the day and throughout the year. He complimented some of the younger girls and said that they have bright futures ahead of them.

“The Connolly twins did well when they came on. You have Ella O’Brien as well there who came on. We had a lot of young players on the pitch. Even the girls who didn’t get on, you would have loved to give runs to the likes of Emma Hannifin and Roisin Heaney. They're there for the future though.

“There is a bright future ahead of these girls. Some of them have already played in big games in Croke Park. Today would be more of a learning curve for the younger ones. You would hope that they will learn from today, bottle it, and drive onto next year”

Despite the poor performance on Saturday, Cole is happy with the progress that the side have made in 2024.

“You can see the progress in this team in every game they played this year. We try and work on things and sometimes it pays off. We hadn’t been scoring goals in the league. We did a lot of work on that and we scored plenty of goals in the championship. That’s just one area where we improved massively as the season went on.”

As for next year, Cole said that as of yet no discussions have taken place regarding his and Tom Moloney’s positions as joint managers, however, Cole was keen to compliment the girls on the work that they had put in during 2024.

“We have not discussed next year yet. This a fantastic group and the numbers and commitment at training is brilliant. We will see what happens in the next couple of weeks regarding next year.”