Royals saw off Mayo and
IT was the year Tiger Woods was born, the blockbuster movie Jaws was released, the Vietnam War ended and the United Kingdom voted yes to remain in the EU.
Closer to home the Northern Troubles continued unabated, Éamon de Valera died, Oliver Plunkett was canonised in Rome and George Best played a League of Ireland match for Cork Celtic against Drogheda.
If you haven’t already guessed, the year was 1975 and a roller-coaster one for the Meath senior football team.
The league campaign ended in a welter of excitement, with Meath taking the scalp of three of the best teams in the country - Kerry, Mayo and Dublin - to clinch their first NFL crown since 1951
The Royals were cock-a-hoop after that success and hopes were high that they would be hot-footing after provincial and All-Ireland honours.
However lurking in the long grass for the opening round of the Leinster Championship as Meath blazed a trail were the men of Louth - and what a turn-up for the books in that game as the Wee County recorded one of their most famous and unlikely victories at Croke Park.
It was a mundane enough start to the year for Meath, losing away to Down in Division 2 as the league campaign recommenced. They then got back to winning ways by defeating Fermanagh at Pairc Tailteann.
That victory over the Erne Men, 2-12 to 2-3, was enough to make it through to a quarter-final meeting with Kerry as the Royals had topped their group on score difference.
Matt Kerrigan and Ken Rennicks found the net for the winners, but it was the scoring exploits by another Meath man elsewhere that helped pave the way for that passage to the knockout stages.
Former Navan O’Mahony’s clubman Dermot Dalton hit a goal and a point for Cavan as they went under by the minimum to Down, who were also chasing a quarter-final spot. However, that single-point win for the Mourne men wasn’t enough, despite they having an identical record to Meath - four wins