Meath set sights on a brighter future

NIGEL CRAWFORD puts his roast beef bap down, takes off his overcoat and stretches his long legs under, in and around the tiny table in Searson’s pub on Dublin’s Baggot Street.

He chats as he eats. He has to. You could quickly lose an afternoon dissecting the twists and turns of Meath’s fortunes in his six years on the team.

Crawford has less than an hour before the offices of Matheson Ormsby Prentice, just off Baggot Street, claim his undivided attention for the rest of the afternoon.

Tomorrow’s division two final with Monaghan has failed to do the same.

Promotion was the aim this spring, games like this and last week’s lancing of the Fermanagh boil are mere bonuses in the greater scheme of things.

Add to that the unwelcome return of an old stomach injury which threatens to limit his involvement to cheerleading duties at Croke Park and his lack of focus on this weekend is framed even better.

Not that he is alone in looking beyond tomorrow. Meath’s heavy championship training regime hasn’t been reduced a jot this past two weeks - secondary titles aren’t highly valued currency in the Boylan household.

It’s tradition like that which makes this past three seasons so hard to take.

Since their destruction of Kerry in the 2001 All-Ireland semi-final, Meath have found themselves out in the cold when the championship really begins to stretch its wings in August.

Fermanagh have curtailed their aspirations in the past two years in the qualifiers, Donegal the summer before, though it’s last year’s defeat to Laois that sticks in the craw the most.

“That was definitely the worst game we’ve played in recent times,” Crawford accepts in between bites.

“As the game went on we just got worse, even though we stayed reasonably competitive for 60 or 70 minutes.

“They pulled away and we just didn’t respond. Lads’ heads went down and that’s something that’s never really happened to a Meath team before. That was the most disappointing thing.”

For the likes of Crawford, Trevor Giles, Graham Geraghty and Ollie Murphy, the manner of the defeat must have been particularly galling. This, after all, was a county that had strutted to a fourth All-Ireland in 12 years just five summers before.

“What I always remember from ‘99 is that we won every game quite comfortably. We were always two or three points better than every team we played,” says Crawford. “Even in the semi-final against Armagh when they got two early goals and we were a few points down it was all very calm.

“There was great composure. The team had an inner confidence and we knew we could win, no matter what. “It was hard to take it all in at the time for a 19-year-old, but I appreciate it far more now.”

For many, the origin of their slippery slope is the 2001 All-Ireland final where, just weeks after dismissing Kerry by 15 points, they went down to Galway by nine.

Yet Crawford remains one of the beacons of hope for better days ahead.

He was still just 21 when John McDermott finally called time on his county career in 2001 and Crawford responded by clocking in with his best season in a green shirt the year after.

He shrugs off the platitudes for how he assumed control of the engine room so adroitly from the Skryne legend, pointing out that, despite his tender years, he was a two-time All-Ireland finalist with the experience of four championship summers.

By now, he’s a card-carrying veteran on a team which continues to be tweaked and pruned by the wily old Boylan in the hope of coming up with another formula for success.

“We’re still a long way off where we were in 2001,” says Crawford. “That team was built up initially from 1996 and a few more came on board in 1999. By 2001 those lads had really gelled as good as they ever would.

“This team is still developing and we’ll know a lot more about where we stand come the championship.”

MEATH: TBA

MONAGHAN: S Duffy; G McQuaid, V Corey, C Flanagan; D Freeman, J Coyle, J Ward; F Duffy, J McElroy; P Finlay, T Freeman, S McManus; D McArdle, R Ronaghan, D Clerkin.