McEnaney vows six-day turnaround won’t be final nail in Meath’s season

He’s so fired up you’d nearly forget the game is over and his side have lost.

But Seamus McEnaney sits in the media room, clenches his fist, bangs the table and assures you Meath will be back next weekend.

“There’s a myth or fact or whatever about this six-day turnaround but I can tell you one thing this group of players is going to test that,” he says, his face turning gradually from red to purple.

“There’s serious spirit, great character and we are going to fight. We will fight tooth and nail to be back here in two weeks’ time, take that from me, we will fight.

“Anyone who wants to travel to that game, you will get some fight and character from Meath. We talked at half time and I asked those players from the bottom of my heart to show real Meath spirit, show real Meath fight, show we have been in dark places before and fought our way out of it.

“They did that.”

Even at that, McEnaney said that given the crowd and the money brought in, the Royals should be given an extra day and shouldn’t be asked to play again until next Sunday.

Yet regardless of scheduling, they’ll be without Kevin Reilly, who has more achilles problems. But that’s for another day, what about what we just witnessed?

“They are very disappointed and disappointed with some parts of our performance. But I don’t know who got man of the match, and good luck to him, whoever he is, but Donal Keoghan had some match. Along with several other young fellas. I couldn’t ask for any more than 20 Meath players with fight and spirit. We felt we could turn Dublin over, we felt we had the men but that two-minute period was crucial before the break.

“Overall, we kicked away a lot of ball, things we haven’t been doing up to now. We gave away more ball today than we did in the last two or three games. The 35th to 37th minute were critical. It’s frustrating.”

Any closing thoughts?

“Why can’t we turn a six-day turnaround over? History is one thing, we can’t live in yesterday but we can live in tomorrow.”