The gloss has been taken off Meath's Leinster SFC win over Wicklow with the news that captain Seamus Kenny will miss the rest of the Championship.

There are four Championship debutants selected in the Meath team to face Wicklow in Sunday's Leinster SFC first round clash at Dr Cullen Park (throw-in 3.30pm).

The knives are being sharpened, the guns oiled. Seamus McEnaney’s detractors in Meath have their ammunition.

IT says everything about the topsy-turvy nature of this game that both teams will look back on theclosing credits of yesterday’s Meath SFC final and balance regrets with gratitude.

SEAMUS McENANEY’S appointment as Meath manager last winter may have stirred up a hornet’s nest at the time — and continues to do so — but ‘outside’ influences haven’t been confined to the man charged with guiding the senior footballers.

Meath 0-11 Galway 0-10

JUSTICE had no answer for justification on Saturday; Meath’s pursuit of vindication was far too strong for Louth’s sense of fairness.

WITH the form of Meath and Louth a long way short of the heights they attained reaching last year’s Leinster final and neither looking like they will trouble the serious contenders in Croke Park later in the year, the indications were that the main prize on offer at Breffni on Saturday was residency on the high moral ground.

MEATH boss Seamus McEnaney last night handed out senior championship debuts to U21 duo Bryan Menton and Ciaran Lenehan for Sunday’s Leinster quarter-final against Kildare in Croke Park but the involvement of veteran forward Graham Geraghty remains unclear as the list of Royal County substitutes has yet to be released.

Meath 1-12 Sligo 0-8

Meath captain Nigel Crawford has been named in the Royals' starting line-up for Sunday's Leinster SFC final against Louth at Croke Park (throw-in 2pm).

ANTHONY MOYLES was happy to let Meath’s attack bask in most of the acclaim after Sunday’s devastating destruction of Dublin, but the versatile veteran feels a strong case was made for the defence as well.

NINE years have slipped by since Meath last knew the joy of beating Dublin in the championship and the dwindling links with that success are almost severed.

Meath 2-14 Laois 0-10

ANYONE under the impression provincial titles don’t mean as much as they used to obviously hasn’t spent much time of late in Meath.

AT LAST.

KEVIN REILLY will miss the remainders of Meath’s NFL campaign and there are fears about the defender’s championship participation.

Kevin Reilly's bad run of luck with injuries is set to continue with the news that a long-term back injury is set to ruin his plans for the upcoming National League.

1. KERRY have learned their lessons from the past.

WE can only hope, if not expect, that Kerry and Cork footballers will provide a final in three weeks time that will be worthy of the occasion and the All-Ireland championship.

ALL WEEK we heard “this is a different Mayo team”. Indeed, many conversations even stretched to how Mayo would cope with another clash with Kerry after being mangled by them in the 2004 and 2006 All-Ireland finals.

THE Meath football team of 2009 are beginning to defy all handy categorisation. For a county whose rivers have run dry for a decade now, we would have thought getting to the last eight of the All-Ireland Championship would’ve sated the appetite and anything after that was for embellishment.

SOONER or later someone is going to assemble a DVD of all the great Dublin-Meath games and, when they do, this particular reel will be one of the first to fall to the editing room floor.

DUBLIN will have to plan without full-back Kevin Ryan — out with a hamstring injury — for their Allianz NHL league clash with Cork at Páirc Uí Chaoimh on Sunday. But the Dubs are hopeful centre-back Tomás Brady and midfielder Johnny McCaffrey will have recovered from knocks sustained when, respectively, assisting Na Fianna and winners Lucan Sarsfields in the Dublin U-21HC final last Saturday.

Cork 1-15 Meath 0-09

Meath 1-25 Carlow 0-8

ANYBODY with even a passing interest in Gaelic games would find it amusing to hear Meath talk about their ‘hopes’ of beating Carlow in tomorrow’s opening round of the GAA Leinster football championship in Croke Park were they unaware of the fall-out from their stormy League meeting with Dublin in Parnell Park almost a month ago.

A record 16 players are set to be suspended in the wake of the violence that marred Dublin's National Football League clash with Meath at Parnell Park on Sunday.

Meath 2-11 UCD 0-15

Back-to-back All-Ireland SFC champions Kerry have topped the list of nominations for the Vodafone GAA All Star awards for 2007 which were announced this evening.

Cork 1-16 Meath 0-9

Meath 1-13 Tyrone 2-8

Dublin 1-11 Meath 0-14

Meath boss Colm Coyle has freshened up his side by making five changes for tomorrow night's NFL Division 2A meeting with Tipperary under the floodlights at Pairc Tailteann, throw-in 7.30pm.

MEATH 1-19 ROSCOMMON 0-09

Carlow 0-12 Meath 1-17

A GLEN RYAN type of Sunday at Croke Park tomorrow. An afternoon for leaders to instil belief in those around them, to rally colleagues in doubt to head trouble off at first sight.

Meath manager Eamonn Barry has brought fit-again forward Daithí Regan back into his side for Sunday's NFL Division 1B visit of Kildare (Páirc Tailteann, throw-in 3.30pm).

Daithí Regan will make his first start of the 2006 National League when Meath take on Laois in Navan on Sunday at Páirc Tailteann (throw-in 2.30pm).