Mayo, keep your eyes on Meath

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.

It certainly should be enough for your average team with three provincial champions and Kerry for company as we head for the last few hurdles of this year's football championship campaign. Meath, however, were not, are not and never will be your average team, and any notions that Mayo might have of the Royals being happy with their lot after a season of relative achievement will be quickly banished come 2pm tomorrow when Eamon O’Brien unleashes his men on John O Mahony’s charges.

The tradition of football in the Royal County has been one where kicking the ball is seen as the defining and fundamental core value in the game. Watching their game against Limerick last week it was notable that the old virtues may not hold sway to the same extent but the good old fashioned heart swelling ebullience so often associated with other Meath teams from the other recessionary era was still in evidence. Seeing Cormac McGuinness clean up on breaking ball, Peadar Byrne tracking runs out of the Limerick back-line as aggressively as he did, Chris O’Connor attack with such anarchic abandon and Stephen Bray bring his undoubted class to the table made all Meath supporters sense that the good days could be just around the corner again.

Bray’s absence because of a lapse in discipline is a pity and it limits the possibilities for the Royals. Scoring 0-4 against Limerick last Saturday, it’s difficult to see how Bray’s ability and experience can be replaced. Peadar Gardiner is bound to have the smell of blood in his nostrils as a result of his last minute heroics against Galway and a menacing Stephen Bray was more likely to put manners on him than any potential replacement.

Gardiner, Howley and Moran can all play football at pace but Nigel Crawford’s renaissance this summer and Brian Meade's abrasive style alongside him allied to Cormac McGuinness’ and Caoimhín King’s ability under breaking ball, could ensure a decent supply of ball for the Meath forwards and could also ask more questions of the Mayo half back-line than have been asked at any stage so far this year. Neither New York or Roscommon exposed any chinks in the Mayo back-line and it was noticeable that when Galway began to employ the Salthill breeze to good effect in the second half three weeks ago, that Mayo dropped Donal Vaughan, Mark Ronaldson, Andy Moran and Ronan McGarrity back to protect defenders such as Howley and Gardiner, who still have too much football and not enough negativity in them. That tactic and the pressure being put on the ball coming out of the Galway back-line provided us with as much evidence as we needed to confirm suspicions that John O’Mahony has finally managed to subjugate the cult of the individual that has bedevilled Mayo’s efforts in recent years. It would appear that everybody is now playing with a clearly defined role within the team and for the team.

FURTHER evidence of this is the ownership of the team dynamic by so many of the successful U21 crop of three years ago. In his first and possibly in his second year in charge, the emerging talents of Cafferkey, Cunniffe, Higgins, Howley, O’Malley and Kilcoyne were regularly used a stick to beat O’Mahony with and he was unfairly accused of over-reliance on the old guard. The addition of Donal Vaughan, Tom Parsons, Robert Hennelly and Aidan O’Shea from this year’s U21 squad has made the team young again and possibly purged them of the hang-ups that older players were accused of harbouring. The flip side of this renewal and regeneration is that the greatest player to have come out of Mayo in the modern era, Kieran McDonald, still remains in exile and Mike McCarthy’s performances for Kerry in the last few weeks merely highlights the wisdom of leaving doors open for players of genuine and enduring talent.

I expected Limerick to beat Meath last weekend. That they didn’t was largely down to Limerick’s unwillingness to come out and play when they created the space for themselves up-front by putting so many men behind the ball. It can also, however, be attributed to Meath's tenacity and doggedness. I expect Meath to play Joe Sheridan in the full forward line again as his lack of such flinty qualities could be highlighted if he was asked to back-track in Croke Park. He is far better employed around the square where Mayo full-back Cafferkey has the training ground experience of marking another tall man, Barry Moran, but may not have the guile to counteract Sheridan’s instinctive flicks and tap-downs.

Sheridan has an irreverent disregard for convention and for knowing his place. That maverick streak and free spiritedness would ordinarily be considered an asset but against Mayo’s greater cohesion he could be emblematic of where Meath are at their most vulnerable.

While much of the chatter all week has been of a possible renewal of the Mayo v Kerry rivalry, that is dangerous talk that can seep into the Western mindset. If Mayo want another tilt at Kerry it’s theirs for the taking but even Meath teams of recent vintage have revelled in the role of the game’s great iconoclasts and we need only rewind two years to recall the compelling football that ended Tyrone’s reign as All-Ireland champions at the quarter-final stage. Nine of tomorrow’s panel saw action that day in Croke Park and they will arrive with the chin out, ready to take on the world again tomorrow. Mayo, though should have the legs on them.

Verdict: Mayo