Sean Barry: Young Meath will rise again

Sean Barry is confident the death of Meath underage football has been greatly exaggerated.

Rather, the Meath U21 boss, who presided over two alarming results this year and faces Kerry on Saturday, says the barren streak is more to do with the lifeline of key players being removed from him.

Meath’s U21s suffered the ignominy of a 4-12 to 0-1 loss to Roscommon in the Hastings Cup tournament last weekend. Big things were expected of this group, having contested the All-Ireland MFC final three years ago.

But they trailed 3-9 to 0-0 at half-time and their sole point in the second half came from a long-range shot that bounced over the bar. Before that, they lost 1-15 to 0-5 to Cavan.

The trend of embarrassing losses also comes after contesting last year’s Leinster U21 final and running All-Ireland champions Dublin close.

Unfortunately for Barry it won’t get any easier in Thurles on Saturday when they wrap up their Hastings Cup campaign against Darragh Ó Sé’s Kerry.

There are at least mitigating circumstances, with rising stars like Adam Flanagan and Harry Rooney forming the senior team’s midfield in the O’Byrne Cup and several more also in Mick O’Dowd’s panel.

“Our senior panel is so young and the knock-on effect is that an awful lot of U21 players are in with them,” explained Barry.

“Unlike Cork, Kerry, Cavan say, where there’s an unwritten rule the senior players stay with the U21s until they go out of the U21 championship, we don’t have that in Meath.

“The seniors have first call. Without making excuses, there’s 40 on our panel and between colleges and county senior panellists, there’s 16 players who missed the first two Hastings Cup games.

“If the truth be known, five or six will probably get their game with the seniors this year so that’s a big hit for our squad.”

Still, Barry accepted there have been significant problems bringing the 2012 All-Ireland minor final team on up through the ranks as a group.

“There’s been an awful lot of injuries to that team of three years ago,” he continued. “We’ve just lost James McEntee to a fractured foot, he’d be part of the senior set-up too but it’s looking like 8-10 weeks out. That’s the whole U21 championship gone for him. Cillian O’Sullivan, Fiachra Ward, Eamonn Wallace, Paddy Kennelly, Seamus Lavin are others who have had serious injuries. They showed great promise in 2012 and hopefully they’ll all get back but the injuries have been a big problem.”

The Hastings Cup is a warm-up tournament for the U21 championship proper. It begins for Meath on March 4 against Westmeath. In the circumstances, whatever Meath can get from the Kerry game is likely to be a bonus.

“I’ve been talking to Darragh Ó Sé and I know they’re flying at the moment,” said Barry. “But, look, the full focus is on Westmeath now. The way things are stacking up we’ll hopefully have a three-week run of it with the full panel coming up to the Westmeath game so that will help a lot.”