MEATH’S FORTUNES DEPEND ON CLUB GAME
BACK in April, RTÉ News followed the story of the Grand National all the way from Aintree in Liverpool to Summerhill in Co. Meath. Tiger Roll’s victory in a photo finish meant another landmark moment in the burgeoning career of local trainer Gordon Elliott and the cameras were dispatched to witness the homecoming. There was a sense of the sporting past and present colliding at the coronation with double All-Ireland winner Mick Lyons rolled out to illustrate the rich sporting pedigree of the Meath village.
As the senior footballers prepare for tomorrow’s county final, that sense of history and tradition is never far away. Only four times have the champions in Meath gone on to Leinster success, the last time all the way back in 2002 when Dunshaughlin were successful.
As for the first time? Back in 1977, when a Summerhill team with a teenage Lyons in the squad scored a famous victory over a St Vincent’s outfit that featured a host of the stars from the Dublin firmament – Brian Mullins, Jimmy Keaveney, Bobby Doyle and more.
This year’s opponents St Peter’s Dunboyne come into this on a tide of emotion following the launch of an official fundraiser for Sean Cox — the club member and Liverpool fan left in a critical condition with a brain injury following an incident before Liverpool’s Champions League semi-final against AS Roma on April 24.
An official GoFundMe page — ‘Support Sean’ — has been set up in the hopes of reaching the target of €500,000 to go towards providing long-term care and support.
As operations manager for the Meath county board, not to mention former county senior football captain and county champion with Simonstown, Seamus Kenny understands the emotional undercurrent to the match.
‘The club itself, with that one incident alone, has gone through a lot. Sustaining injuries like that is something no club, no family, no individual should ever suffer going to a sports event. In one sense, everyone would love to see a bit of silverware going to Dunboyne on the back of that, but sport doesn’t necessarily work out like that,’ said Kenny.
‘It shows the value of the GAA and the community, how everyone has rallied around them, not just locally but nationally.
‘That’s again what sport brings, it brings us together. It might divide us at times but, for serious incidents like that, it does unite us.’
As someone with a distinct stake in the direction of Meath football, he tries to unravel the county champions’ poor record in Leinster.
‘It’s an annual topic of debate, especially at senior level. But if you look at junior and intermediate, our teams have always been competitive. Our teams would have won Leinster titles at those grades in recent years. ‘At senior level, there is probably a number of issues. Obviously, the strength of Dublin club football gives them a bit of a headstart. A lot is down to their structures, internal competitiveness, an influx of people working in the city and have moved there. ‘In terms of Meath, we haven’t had a real dominant team at club level outside of Dunshaughlin. The teams [outside Meath] that are progressing in the Leinster Club Championship are continuously winning their own Club Championship. They have that form, are used to travelling outside the county, playing competitively.’ The disappointment at senior county level this summer has been tempered by the green shoots that are finally appearing at underage.
Meath pushed Galway all the way in this year’s Under-17 All-Ireland semi-final after winning the Leinster championship.
Watching Meath and Galway go at it in a thrilling, end-to-end game that produced five goals and 24 points combined and showcased high-fielding and all the traditional skills of the game, it was hard to believe the same sport was the source of such negative commentary over the summer. That game was a far cry from the defensive bore-fests involving mass defences, and norisk, possession-based football where the handpass is king.
Kenny is part of the Standing Committee on Playing Rules that produced the five experimental rules that have since become a national talking point. They are due to be trialled in next year’s Allianz Football League – that’s if they survive the consultation process involving managers and players, and get the green light from county board delegates at the GAA’s Central Council.
Leaving well enough alone wasn’t an option, says Kenny, who explains that the committee pored over a wealth of empirical data drawn from the sterling statistical work of Gaelic Stats’ Rob Carroll over this year’s Championships.
‘If we came back and produced absolutely nothing, we would have been castigated. We reviewed every game in the Championship this year, both football and hurling. The main focal points, talking points, were all around football. How negative and uninspiring it had become. It was never a case of sit back, just let it evolve naturally.’
Which is the approach Tyrone manager Mickey Harte has long since advocated.
‘I get where Mickey Harte is coming from but the game has been trying to evolve naturally over the last five, six, seven, eight years – it’s still in a state of flux. We’re trying to apply certain rules that might improve the game.’
And so a three-limit handpass rule is among the five changes proposed; so too an offensive mark for a catch inside the 20-metre line.
‘You’re not trying to bastardise the game for it to be nearly called something else,’ he says of the delicate balancing act. ‘That’s another concern. Unfortunately, some of the systems that have come in have led to these dour, sterile games where the element of risk is so limited. It’s very much a calculated game. If we’re looking at it from an entertainment point of view, there are a lot of games over the last 12 months, which have been widely publicised, where supporters have voted with their feet.
‘From the playing rules committee, that was one of the key aspects, how you can improve the game from a viewing point of view. The principle of rewarding skills.’