Provincial prize is the Royal goal

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.

Only Dublin have claimed more Leinster championships than the Royals but their last success came nine years ago. And, as wing-back Caoimhin King has admitted, that is simply far too long a wait. Meath have made good use of the back door, reaching All-Ireland semi-finals in 2007 and again last year, but silverware is the be all and end all for the current crop of players.

“I suppose it is,” said King, “to get a run going in Leinster and try to get to a Leinster final, that’s the main aim at this stage. It has been a long time since 2001 so it is about time that Meath themselves back on the map in Leinster.”

The county’s decline in the provincial setting has been nothing short of shocking since claiming their 20th title at the start of the century.

Since then, they have failed to put back-to-back wins together in the competition through eight straight seasons but they will have the opportunity to right that wrong in three weeks’ time against Laois.

The sides haven’t met in the championship since Laois cantered to a comfortable seven-point win in the Leinster semi-final in 2004.

“The Laois game is going to be a big game for us,” said King. “If we get over that we will be very confident because we have a good panel with footballers that are as good as anywhere in the country. We under-performed big time last year in the (All-Ireland) semi-final against Kerry. We thought we could have the beating of them but hopefully now we will get over the Laois game and get a bit of momentum going.”

Get over Laois and Meath will have earned themselves a crack at Dublin or Wexford and Eamon O’Brien’s side did enough against Offaly on Sunday to suggest that they have it in them to end their provincial drought.

The dismissal of Offaly’s John Coughlan ended any hopes of an upset in Portlaoise but Meath had shown enough going forward prior to that to hint at great things to come.

“They seemed to fall apart a bit in the second-half, a small bit of a lack of experience or something. Most of the Meath lads have been around a good while now so it was just a case of finishing out the game.”

Shane O’Rourke and Joe Sheridan have blown hot and cold in recent years but the pair were on fire two days ago while Stephen Bray put in another fine display alongside them.

Between the three, they totted up 1-10 from play and Cian Ward added a perfect seven from seven from dead balls. Retain that form going forward, individually and collectively, and Meath will fancy their chances against anyone. The one caveat was a defence which leaked two goals in the first-half before Coughlan’s departure and some effective smothering tactics on McNamee stemmed the leaks.

“Our defenders are very good,” said King. “They just got caught once or twice but McNamee is as good a forward as you will get in the country and the ball coming into him was good in the first-half. We weren’t closing him down enough but Kevin Reilly would have been a big addition back there. He is good under the high ball and stuff.”

Reilly is one of the best full-backs in the country and the hope is that he will be back in time for the clash with Laois while similar hopes rest on centre-back Cormac McGuinness who is also on the road to recovery.

“In fairness, we haven’t won that many Leinster Championship games the last four or five years so it is good to get a bit of momentum under our belts but Laois are good footballers. It will probably be an open enough game and you wouldn’t know which way it will go.”