Irish Daily Star - Inside Sport
‘The Royals are on life support’
DAVID Beggy says Meath are “on life support” at the moment and have to do better.
Beggy reckons that while Meath have 12 senior teams that in reality only four or five are “truly senior teams”.
“The rest are intermediate, playing senior football,” he says. “We are creating a structure and getting these divisional matches up and going.
“We could move a step further and try and amalgamate a few places and have only six senior clubs and three or four divisional teams with the best of the junior and intermediate clubs.
“Get that going and maybe something starts coming off that.
“We are starting to go down that road a little bit but we have to do something very drastic because we can’t do what we are doing now.
Support
“We are on life support at the moment, just about surviving in Division 2 hopefully and that’s just not good enough, but that’s where we are at.”
Beggy says Meath need to unearth a marquee player or two, pointing to Donal Keogan as the only man who fits the bill over the past decade and a half.
Double AllIreland winner Beggy says his own club mate, Meath’s last All Star (2007) and current selector Stephen Bray, is the last real topdrawer forward the county have had.
“There is always hope, but at the moment it’s only hope,” says Beggy.
“We have no (David) Clifford coming up in the minors – to say there is a man that’s going to spark it all.
“Now there might be a few lower down. We need marquee players and we don’t have any that you could build hope on.
“I think we all remembered watching Clifford at Croke Park knowing that, ‘By
Jesus he is coming into the Kerry (senior) set up. That’s going to make them a serious outfit again’.
“It turned out to be the case. We don’t have that.”
Beggy has faith in his old teammate Colm O’Rourke, the new Meath manager.
“The great thing with Colm is his experience,” he says. “Being a headmaster in a college for a number of years, his organisational skills are second to none.
“He is tuned into getting his As, Bs and Cs in a row.
“He knows a man who knows how to win an All-Ireland and he said, ‘Let’s get some help off him,’ and he brought in Sean (Boylan).
“I’d love if he (O’Rourke) had have come in (as
Meath manager) after Sean because I thought he would have kept the continuity going. I sometimes think he came in too late.”
Boylan left the job in August 2005 after 23 years and four All-Ireland titles.
Beggy continues: “It remains to be seen how good he (O’Rourke) is. We’ll see when Championship football comes along.
“It’s very easy to watch a match and give your opinion after it, which he (O’Rourke) was brilliant at. When you are on the sideline and you have to make decisions that’s a different thing altogether and senior championship. It’s going to be interesting.”