Patience pays off for loyal Royal Shane

Shane McAnarney has been a Meath senior footballer since 2006, but try asking him when he made his debut and he will tell you it came as recently as last year.

Technically, he is wrong, but that isn’t to say his point of view doesn’t contain a fair degree of truth.

Eamonn Barry first ushered him into the county’s senior squad but for the next five years he learned to live off crumbs. Five minutes here, 20 minutes there if he was really lucky. Barry came and went. So did Colm Coyle and Eamon O’Brien and the man from Athboy remained sitting on the shelf.