Times changed as underdogs rally to Royals standard

County boundaries have always provided the most fertile of grounds for deep-seated rivalries in the GAA but some enmities are bred by means other than geography.

Familiarity and failure are usually chief among them.

Offaly’s ability to punch above their weight made them particularly unlikeable to those of us who were coming of age in Laois in the 1980s and early 1990s but, for this onlooker at the time, Meath were never far behind in the unpopularity stakes. At times, they were even top of the list.

Nothing unusual there, you might say. Sure, didn’t most of the country curl their lips when talk turned to Sean Boylan’s boys? Maybe, but this wasn’t so much to do with their occasionally agricultural methods. This was personal.

Between 1990 and 1996, Laois and Meath met half-a-dozen times in the Leinster championship. Meath learned to enjoy those days. They won by 20 points in ’90, by six in the Leinster final in ’91, eight in ’93, four in ’94 and eight again in ’96.

The one hiccup in that lopsided sequence came in 1992 when the previous year’s All-Ireland finalists were put down by three points — and, glory be, in Navan of all places — with a teenage and tousled Hugh Emerson wreaking havoc in the home defence.

Beautiful. It was the county’s most noteworthy championship performance for years and, unfortunately, it would remain so until 2003 when Dublin were sacked in their Croke Park castle by Mick O’Dwyer’s boys in the provincial semi-final.

Meetings with Meath thinned in the years after ’96. Laois degenerated from a team that would invariably enjoy two or more days out every summer to one that would be escorted off the championship premises after 70 minutes — but some memories stick like Teflon.

By the time the sides met in the 2004 Leinster semi-final, Laois had just that one win in Páirc Tailteann to cling to in the face of eight defeats in the previous 17 years but the counties’ fortunes had turned by then and ‘Leix’ won by seven points that day.

They never trailed and didn’t concede a single score in the last 25 minutes but the image that stands out is one of full-forward Colm Parkinson teasing a posse of Meath defenders with some keepy-uppy along the sideline as the minutes wound down. Parkinson paid for his delicate dance with the inevitable crunching tackle that sent him sprawling to the ground but he arose with a smile that was shared by long-suffering supporters thankful to see such a painful shoe being squeezed onto the other foot.

We’ve all moved on in the years since.

A decade spent in the press box tends to soften such childhood prejudices. So, too, do travails such as those Meath — and Laois — endured in recent years, so it was with an open heart that their resurrection was welcomed last Sunday.

The sight of youngsters like Conor Gillespie, who gave the lie to the idea that the art of high fielding is dead, or a whip-thin Damian Carroll, who gambolled about in a No 11 shirt miles too big for him like a Trevor Giles of old, was a joy to behold.

Even better was the fact that here was a team written off after a traumatic relegation to the third tier of the Allianz League, one whose manager had stood resolutely at his post in the face of a failed putsch and needed two attempts to squeeze past Carlow.

That they were facing an opponent such as Kildare made it all the better.

Nothing against Kieran McGeeney or his players but it has been hard to find too much affection for the Lilywhites, whose machine-like qualities and all-white kit are suggestive of a prototype yet to be fitted with the various bells and whistles to lend it colour.

None of which is to play down the time, effort and expertise that went into preparing their opponents. This was no ragtag bunch of swing-from-the-hip merchants. In Seamus McEnaney, and others like Giles and John Evans, Meath lacked for little in the way of expertise or nous.

Yet their ability to shrug aside the effects of a shambolic run-up to last weekend’s Leinster semi-final and sweep aside a team of Kildare’s ability and athleticism with a side callow and carefree can only give heart to those counties currently marooned in a morass of mediocrity and muddles.

God knows there are enough of them out there. The odds are that Meath will still lose the Leinster final to Dublin later this month but they have already made their mark. And who’d have thought it 20 years ago? The Royals striking a blow for the underdogs they used to repress.

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