‘There’s no easy answer, no short-term fix,’ the Meath boss says of the Royal county’s current standing in Gaelic football
Whatever way you looked at it, Sunday afternoon’s game in Navan was always likely to be a difficult one for Colm O’Rouke and his Meath team. Kerry just are that step or two or three ahead of the Royals at this stage in their development.
So, while they lost, and lost quite comfortably, it was still a learning opportunity for these young Royals. This is it guys, the level to which you must aspire, this is what an All Ireland contending outfit looks like, feels like, plays like.
“Well, we’re coming up against one of the top two or three teams in the country, full of class and experience at this level and we’re a young raw, inexperienced team so it was always going to be a difficult assignment,” O’Rourke reflected post-match.
“I thought in the first-half of the game we had done quite well, especially as we had 14 shots in the first-half and they had 14 shots and yet we ended up with three points and they ended up with 10.
“So they had the accuracy whereas we didn’t. I suppose in the second-half they had more experience and of course they’re full of class as well. They have played at the top level for a long time. Most of our fellas have only experienced these games for the first or second time.”
For as difficult as it was, as the manager says there were certain aspects of the performance that will have pleased him. The way Meath defended in the first half, limiting Kerry to just a handful of scores from their starting sextet up front, neither Clifford brother scoring, satisfying surely?
“Yes [we defended well in the first half],” O’Rourke concurred.
“We were very competitive I thought all over the field and we moved the ball well and got plenty of chances. 14 shots on goal is quite a lot of shots in any half, it’s better than we had managed up to now.
“Except that the conversion rate was just very poor and that came back to bite us. We should have been a lot closer to them at half-time. That saps the confidence of a young team as well.”
Nevertheless – despite conceding a substantial 2-18 – is there a case to be made the Royals performance in Páirc Tailteann against the Kingdom was a step up from their performance against Louth in Inniskeen the previous round?
“Ah yeah, absolutely,” the Meath boss stressed.
“The lads…you can’t fault the effort, commitment to the cause and in terms of training or matches, there’s no easy answer, no short-term fix. I think I have said it here in press conferences on so many occasions, there isn’t a ready made supply of David Cliffords or Seán O’Sheas or Con O’Callaghans in Meath at the moment.
“We have to develop the group that we have. We’re going to have patience with these and stick with the process and give them every bit of encouragement that we possibly can.
“Those who aren’t patient and who make noise are the people who don’t understand that and are those who we ignore.”
To that end, O’Rourke handed out a number of debuts against Kerry on Sunday afternoon.
“Yes, and Seán Ryan did well, Michael Murphy did well and Brian O’Halloran,” O’Rourke continued.
“All of these lads would only have played a couple of games for Meath. What we’re lacking I suppose is the hardcore experienced group from 25 to 30, which makes up the bones of the top inter-county teams.
“We just don’t have all those players available to us at that level. So we have to develop the group and show them patience and kindness after a game like today. Because we cannot fault the effort and we’ll just see can we improve from game-to-game and from season-to-season.”
One glaring thing the Royals need to work on is their finishing, to shoot just three first half points from fourteen opportunities (even accounting for a tricky breeze) just isn’t good enough.
“Yeah, well we’d love to go into the transfer market and get Seán O’Shea or Paudie Clifford or David Clifford or some of the good Dublin forwards,” O’Rourke said when asked about that.
“We just don’t have that clinical edge to our performances. It’s let us down now for the whole year. All we can do is…we spend hours and hours training and score-taking. Everybody seems to be able to kick points in training. It seems to desert them in the games. But again, we’ll just keep at it.
“Well I would prefer if it [the progress] was quicker and if the upward curve was steeper, but we are where we are. I suppose the biggest disappointment of this year so far has been the Louth game. We would have hoped to be far more competitive.
“I know there were various factors which didn’t help in the build-up to that game, on the day, but I think the Monaghan game is now going to give us a fair picture of where we’re at. But I think we are improving. I think there’s a big performance in us yet.
“We’ll go back at it on Tuesday or Wednesday night and we’ll sit down and have a chat about the game. But the lads are trying hard so I won’t be hard on them in that regard.
“There won’t be any negative stuff, we’ll look at things we can improve on. There’ll be no problem with getting the lads motivated.”
