‘Gone is the day when just one player gets up to speak’

To captain your county is one of the top honours in the GAA. Only a small percentage of players get to experienced it.

Many great players, in hurling, football or camogie, never got the chance to lead their colleagues out for games.

Not that everybody would want it mind. It takes a special temperament to be captain. A willingness and the confidence to step up and show the way. The tendency used to be to give the armband to a seasoned campaigner; a grizzled veteran of many battles edging towards the conclusion of a long career.

Meath camogie captain Leah Devine is different to all that. She has been through some bruising battles all right but at 23 she could still be considered to be nearer the start of her career rather than edging reluctantly towards the twilight years.

Yet despite her relative youth she can draw on six years of turning out at senior level for Meath. When it comes to giving advise to young players new to the scene - and there are a few of them in the Meath panel this year - the Na Fianna player certainly qualifies.

She also qualifies as captain material because it is her way to battle and graft throughout games - and in so doing she gives an ideal demonstration of leading by example to her younger cohorts. She did just that again at Tullamore on Saturday, helping with her efforts, to shore up the Meath defence against a relentless wave of Offaly attacks.

She arrived on the inter-county front just after Meath won the All-Ireland Intermediate title in 2017. She, and her colleagues in the green and gold, have gone close to landing the big prize since most notably in 2023 when they got to both an All-Ireland Intermediate final and a National League decider and lost both, to Derry and Kerry respectively.

She also had an outing in Croke Park with her club Na Fianna towards the end of 2023 but they lost out too, succumbing to Kerry side Clanmaurice in the All-Ireland Intermediate decider. She has played her part in turning Na Fianna into one of the top sides in Leinster, if not the country.

She knows that each new season brings with it new opportunities but she knows too a team has to be ready to take the chances that present themselves because the big days on the big stage don't arrive too often in any player's career. "We missed out on a national title two years ago, we are hoping this year we can take that big step," she commented after Saturday's defeat.

The Na Fianna player, who is a student, working on a Masters in Strategic Management in UCD, says her job of leading this current Meath team is made much easier because of the leadership qualities of so many others in the team.

"Gone is the day when just one player gets up to speak, there's leaders all over this Meath team, Grace (Coleman), Ellen (Burke), Maeve (Clince), Tara (Murphy), others too, everyone has their say and that's important because it can bring different ideas on how we can get better, and that's what we are always seeking to do, to learn and improve, game by game."

The Meath captain had every reason to feel encouraged and emboldened by Meath's performance on Saturday. Offaly went into the contest on the back of impressive victories over Derry and Kerry and would have been expected to win Saturday's game comfortably at the splendid O'Connor Park. After all in the All-Ireland Intermediate quarter-final last year in Thurles the Faithful County defeated Meath 5-18 to 3-6.

Instead on Saturday Meath were the more fluent, more composed team for lengthy spells, often working their way through the home team's defensive lines with neat passes and finishing off chances with a confident flourish.

Against that the visitors tended to fade for spells with Offaly gaining the initiative, mopping up loose ball around midfield and in that way staying on the front-foot for spells. It says something about Meath's defensive strength, however, that Offaly were unable to find the net.

"I think we had it there to win, and that's encouraging, I think some decision making was probably the difference at the end. Different decisions we could have won."

Meath manager Anton O'Neill was also upbeat afterwards with the display, if not the result.

"I'm delighted with the performance, disappointed to lose, but Offaly are odds on favourites to win the league and the championship, they are a good hurling side. We knew last week we left the Kerry match behind us, we needed a big display here and we got it.

"What I was delighted about was the way the girls brought out what we are doing in training and it was great to see it on the pitch. We were able to match them in a lot of areas, just a few little decisions caught us out."

With growing hope Meath march on.