BOYLAN TALKS SPORT: One moderate jolt for Gaelic football - a week of seismic statements for Meath

Whoever the odds compilers on GAA matches are, they must be from some county that Meath stuffed in times past. Furthermore, they must be perfectly balanced with a chip on both shoulders, because the manner in which they have chalked up matches involving Meath teams of late has been nothing short of insulting.

In midweek, Kildare were installed as 1/3 favourites (and 5/6 to go on and win the Leinster U-20 FC) even though Cathal O Bric’s side are reigning and defending Leinster Champions, were playing at home and had already beaten Dublin in the competition. Thankfully, our lads rubbished that disrespect and now look forward to what’s liable to be a mighty stern test against Louth in Newbridge on Wednesday next.

So to the county senior hurlers. Again, their opponents, Derry, were listed as 1/3 supposed good things before Saturday’s Christy Ring Cup encounter at Celtic Park. Right so they did beat Johnny Greville’s charges earlier in the league. True too that Meath did ship a very heavy defeat in their opening ‘summer’ encounter against London.

Mind you, anybody who doubted the credentials of this green and gold group got their answer fairly lively when the rejuvenated Mikey Cole netted twice inside the first 11 minutes. That in itself gave the visitors a buffer they would never lose as points from Jack Regan and Kris Gorman left those who last lifted the trophy named after the greatest hurler of all time in 2023 clear by 2-09 to 0-09 at the break.

Though Cormac Doherty hit the first three scores of the second half for the locals, a Damien Healy goal at the other end appeared to have put his side back in the box seat at 3-09 to 0-12.

Ultimately, I suppose it did make difference, even though points from Nicky Potterton, Lorcan Byrne and substitutes Sean Quigley and Cian Rogers appeared to have kept Meath at arms’ length from their opponents.

Turning the weekly odyssey in a slightly different direction, keeping their highly vaunted opponents at arms length turned out to be a much less arduous task for our U-20 footballers against Kildare than would have been expected.

Especially after the visitors to sodden Ashbourne got away to a 1-2 to 0-0 start. Showing the character of the champions they are, between Rian Stafford, John Harkin and Jamie Murphy, they constructed a 0-13 to 1-5 half time lead for the locals.

Given the gargantuan effort required to chisel out the aforementioned interval advantage, it was perhaps inevitable that Cathal O Bric’s charges were unable to maintain their attacking intensity. However, it was only through the defencive diligence of Sam Jordan and Rian Early and Ciaran O’Hare and the relentless ball carrying ability of Eamonn Armstrong which enabled the dynamic duo to clip over the few scores which kept the board ticking over and eased the defending Seamus Flood Cup holders through to a repeat of last year’s decider.

Now, factor in that on Thursday evening, Joe Cowley’s team will have their crack at the knockout stages of the Leinster MFC against Offaly, you’d have thought that would’ve constituted enough good news for one ramble on this page.

“If you can dream, and not make dreams your master, and think not make thoughts your aim. And meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same”.

Rudyard Kipling’s famous words can be applied to many facets of life, and Meath’s attempts to defeat Dublin at (male) senior inter-county level for the last two and half decades are no different.

We’ve thought about doing it. We’ve dreamt about how we might do it. We might have even, horribly, taken moral triumph from getting any way close to them.

Yet, through this evening’s lens, it could be said that the thoughts of beating our great rivals never left the Royal mindset, but, it would equally need to be admitted that at times it would only be dreaming to think we had a chance to beat them.

However, there were a few words of wisdom which were relayed in this direction with regard to the Meath-Dublin rivalry which still carry as credence to this very day. The relevance of both being central to the truly sensational chapter to that was penned into the annals of the GAA’s greatest rivalry on Sunday last.

Firstly, the late Noel Coogan often wrote of each side having spells of dominance over the other. Now, not for a second am I suggesting that that might be about to happen again, but, Sunday marked another turn in the road for the storied showdowns.

The other magnificent modicum came from my neighbour and namesake who engineered more success for the county against the two shades of blue than anybody else.

Prior to a clash against the auld enemy what is probably a scarily long time ago, Sean said to me, “You have to pull a rabbit out of the hat against Dublin. Throw something at them they’re not expecting”.

Boy was he a master hand at it. Whether it was running the sh*t out of lads in training between the drawn and replayed NFL Finals of 1988 even though they were on holiday in Florida. Reward for lifting the Sam Maguire the previous September.

Not only that, but he unleashed a hitherto unknown 18-year-old called Brendan Reilly, who left Kieran Duff in his wake and planted Meath’s second goal. As they produced the best ever display by our brand of green and gold against a Dublin team. Until Sunday last.

After ‘88, the next rabbit appeared in 1991, when what was practiced on a soccer pitch in Scotland for hours evolved into Kevin Foley’s goal. The greatest ever scored in the big field.

In ‘96, Graham Geraghty and Brendan Reilly were transplanted from the half back line to the forwards. We all know what happened there!

From there, the next circus trick manifested itself the following year when - on the occasion when Sean made the wise observation - walking Donal Curtis onto centre stage at a time when there were more there were more than a few in Meath who didn’t even know who he was.

Not only that, but the herbalist entrusted him to pick up the marquee Dublin forward at the time. I’m not sure if it was Jim Gavin or Dessie Farrell.

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And so, we arrive at 2025. Step forward the man they call ‘Banty’ - the dazzling James Conlon. An 11th hour replacement for Shane Walsh. For context, picture, if you will, replacing Paul O’Connell with Peter Stringer.

What Conlon, though, offers is a moving target. Like the knotters on a baler, continually stuffing away material as quickly as it can be augured in his direction.

The same can of course be said of Eoghan Frayne and when the burgeoning Keith Curtis and the indefatigable Bryan Menton and the ebullient Mat Costello contributed to the construction of a 0-17 to 0-05 interval advantage, what Paidi might have called “The f*****g grains of rice” began to add up that maybe, just maybe, we could begin to dream the impossible dream.

Tempering such temptations, though, was the inclination that the blue wave would gust up and at least try to swallow us whole.

Marc O’Se on co-commentary with Dave McIntyre, disappointingly, seemed more intent on making excuses for Dublin - including when Theo Clancy very obviously struck Conlon, rather than acknowledging what a monumental day for Meath and this group of players in particular.