Meath are going nowhere until they face up to hard truths
We must know our place in pecking order, says Royals legend Beggy
IF David Beggy had one wish, it would be that the Meath team he played on was locked away forever instead of being dusted down and used as a yardstick to beat – more than measure – those who have followed. This summer marked the 30th anniversary of the four-game saga with Dublin in which Beggy had the final say by kicking the winning point. Those games gripped a nation and inevitably amounted to another opportunity for nostalgia junkies to get their fix of the good old days when Meath played and everyone else got nervous.
They were box office back then, but today they are not even on the box. A famed rivalry has been reduced to a familiar routine, Meath show up and Dublin beat them by ever bigger margins – it is six on the bounce now and the last two Leinster finals have been won by an aggregate margin of 37 points. The yawning gulf that now exists between the old enemies might just explain why it has been dropped from today’s prime time slot.
‘It is not like Celtic and Rangers where you have two sets of supteams
‘MEATH ARE IRRELEVANT IN FOOTBALL TERMS AT THE MOMENT’
porters who go at it every week and no matter what the result is, even though Celtic won it for 10 years in a row, it is still a RangersCeltic derby,’ explains Beggy.
‘It is not like that in the GAA, you still have to have the respect and, to be honest, Meath are quite irrelevant in football terms at the moment.’
That’s quite the statement from someone who starred on a team that was a level above relevance. But the Navan native – who invited intrigue as his guitar–strumming, cigarette-smoking, rugby-playing persona put the cap on a playing style summed by his moniker ‘Jinksy’ – believes that until Meath admit the truth, they are only in the business of fooling themselves.
‘It is very hard to say but if you ignore the truth you are going to go nowhere. If you still think that you are at the top table, you are just fooling yourself and everybody around you.
‘In fairness to Andy McEntee, he understands that and he knows he has to get them back up on the top table.’
It will take some travelling because of the new ways Meath have found of coming up shy against Dublin. They managed just four points in the 2019 Leinster final, but that was a relative high when compared to last year’s 3-21 to 0-9 mauling.
It has led to the accusation that those results have thrashed Meath’s identity, which is another way of saying that they have betrayed the memory of Seán Boylan’s great of the 1980s and ’90s.
Beggy has little time for that kind of talk.
‘I think that identity is gone, it has to be created again and it is the players now who have to create this new identity.
‘We are playing a different style of football than we used to and that is difficult because maybe Meath football has a particular DNA
‘But I actually don’t believe that they want to recreate what we had. They want to create their own identity to suit the modern game and they are going to have to find it themselves.
‘I am looking forward to the day when our time is just talked about once a year at a dinner or something like that. It should not be used as a yardstick for them at all.
‘There is no comparison with the type of players that was then and the type of player there is now.
‘I would hate to be saying, “Oh these boys are coming and they are just going to be like the team of ’87 or ’91”, because if they are, they will be beaten anyway because that game is dead in the water. It does not exist any more. They have to find their own identity and hopefully they will start on Sunday.’
And yet the theory persists that even if they lose, Meath can salvage something from defeat today if they, at least, bring war to Dublin.
Beggy, who is currently part of his club Navan O’Mahonys’ management team, shakes his head at a game plan that is now only to be found in a time capsule.
‘It is completely past. Our game of chaos, which it was, was suitable for that and it allowed us to play like we did.
‘If you looked at some of our games there was hardly a pass in it. You got the ball and you kicked it before you got hammered and it was up to the forwards to get onto it.
‘It was a completely different mindset on the pitch whereas these guys now, and I am involved in a bit of coaching, an awful lot of stuff gets worked out and it is so much more drilled than it is used to be so the last thing they want to do is play the way we used to because they would have no chance.
‘For me, the glimmer of hope is Dublin will go through a little bit of uncomfortableness and awkwardness with Cluxton not there because he is there for so long as an influence and he really started off every move they had.
‘If we sit back now off the Dublin kick-out we are in real trouble, we have to press them. Whether we do or not, I don’t know. If we stand back from the kick-outs and stay zonal they will destroy us.’
There is another theory, an even more depressing one, which states that Meath’s rivalry with Dublin is dead for ever.
Dublin’s size, funding, structures and home advantage has turned a level playing field into a cliff face and there is nothing that can be done.
‘I absolutely do not see that at all. When time is given, a lot of it is given. It is amazing how quickly that could reignite. There is so much work being done behind the scenes in so many levels.
‘We might still be two or three years away from it but I do believe it will come back, I really do.
‘It is sometimes ignored because people think it is about money, numbers and all that kind of stuff but Dublin got so many serious footballers coming at the one time, it was of huge benefit to them.
There are argu
‘THE PLAYERS NOW HAVE TO CREATE A NEW IDENTITY FOR THEMSELVES’
ments about funding but not for Meath. Whatever is required for the Meath players to do, it is being done,’ he insists.
And the rest is now up to themselves.
‘If it is good enough for them to wear a Meath jersey, and if that is their ambition then we are knackered. And sometimes in the last 10-15 years I felt it was a lot more important to them to wear the jersey than to win with the jersey on.
‘I think Andy is changing that – and I know he has had terrible runs here and there – but he has certainly put more respect into the jersey and hopefully that will work for him. I feel sorry for these players that they have missed out to a certain extent but there really is no place in sport for feeling sorry, when you lose, you lose and it’s your fault, there is no way of sugaring that.
‘If you win by a point you are the best team and if you lose by a point you are not the best team. And that is it.
‘I suppose they are missing out on great memories and it is a shame that they do not get to experience or have that feeling we had but it is up to them to make it happen.’