O’Rourke: Royals will relish facing All-Ireland champions in Croke Park

WHEN you win your first championship match, register a really decent tally in the process and welcome back a number of players from injury, it has to be a good day’s work.

However, victory came with a proviso as the Meath defence conceded three goals, all of which were of the soft variety. Those were things manager Colm O’Rourke acknowledged after the win over Longford as attention quickly turned to Croke Park and a meeting with All-Ireland champions Dublin next Sunday.

“I was certainly very happy with the forward play, particularly the first half,” he said.

“During the league, it’s a wellknown fact that we haven’t scored enough to win big games. We have found it difficult to get goals and we’ve found it difficult to get more than 12 points, so we focused in on that and we wanted to hit 16 or 17 points and get a goal along the way, so I suppose from that point of view, we achieved that side of it – we didn’t want the idea of letting in three goals on the other side.

“We would be very concerned about that, we had set out at halftime to have a very tight defence for the second half and to keep them to points. I think the players realise that there was a lot of sloppiness there, a lack of concentration and we need to do better.

“We came down here to win and the conditions made it very difficult but the forward accuracy was very good, it was a significant improvement in anything we’ve achieved before so we’ll take a lot of heart from that, at least we can score. What we want to try and ensure is that we don’t concede three goals in the first 10 minutes next week because if we defend like that the game will be over early.”

The return of Jordan Morris and James Conlon to attack was a big boost, according to O’Rourke.

“They are natural forwards and natural scorers, so it was a delight to see James Conlon coming back and he had an interrupted preparation, broke a toe early in the year and has worked really, really hard.

“Jordan, of course, hadn’t played a game now since I think the Cavan county final last October, so for both of them to come out in their first game, it was asking a lot probably to put them in like that. But they fairly well responded, they were going well in training, so we decided to just give them their head.”

Despite the task that awaits them next Sunday, O’Rourke said the clash with Dublin was something that Meath would relish.

“Well it’s early in their development but sometimes you have to get up and put your chest out and put your best foot forward. When is the right time to go to Croke Park? There’s none, you have to just get on with it and start winning big games there. That’s what defines you as a man, as a footballer, as a warrior in Meath just to be able to go to Croke Park and beat Dublin and take them on toe-to-toe. So these fellas are as ambitious as any other player, just as ambitious as the team I played with or the team Trevor Giles played with. They want to go there, they want to do that as well.

“Ask any young fella in Meath what do you want to do? You want to go to Croke Park, play on the Meath team and play against Dublin in a big game. I know it’s a big task and it’s a young team, but we’re getting better all the time and we’re not going to play out of fear, we’re going to play with confidence.

“I think they’re naturally confident players anyway and I think the big thing is that they do see themselves now that there has been an improvement over the last six months. I think a lot of league games we could see snatches of it, particularly against Kildare, Cavan and Louth.

“We played very well and okay we didn’t get results in other games, but we got what we wanted out of the league and training has gone very well, they’ve worked really, really hard and you could even see in the last week that things had improved again.”