"The quality in Meath is just not there at the moment."
These are glory days for the club managed by Meath legend Colm O'Rourke as they close in on what would also be just the second title in their history.
Yet few possess the ability of O'Rourke, a renowned national pundit, to take a step back and view a situation in its entirety.
And O'Rourke doesn't paint a terribly pretty picture of where Meath football is generally right now.
There are all kinds of metrics by which the decline of Meath football in the last 10 or 15 years can be measured.
One of those is the performances of their best team, namely the county senior champions, in the Leinster club championship where Summerhill's win over the Louth representatives in 2013 is the only win by a Meath side in six years.
It's 2004 since a Meath club last reached the final and 15 since a Royal County side, Dunshaughlin, actually won the provincial crown.
At inter-county level, Meath have been treading water for some time, operating at a level just below where the big prizes are contested.
Something is clearly amiss in a county of just under 200,000 that O'Rourke once claimed should be the 'Kerry of Leinster' with Gaelic football the dominant code in the county.
"There's no opposition (to Gaelic football) really there at all," said O'Rourke. "We should be better. But I said a few years ago that this is a 10-year project in Meath and I haven't changed my mind. The fellas that have been involved with the senior team in Meath, Mick O'Dowd and Andy McEntee now, they've put in huge effort and training and did things very well and yet we were still a long way behind.
"When you have management that's good and there are still no results, then you have to look at what else should we could be doing better and obviously the club scene has to be looked at, the underage scene, there's a whole set of things."
O'Rourke has done his part to keep the conveyor belt moving along. The St Pat's College headmaster guided the school to Hogan Cup titles in 2000, 2001 and 2004 and is currently in his second stint in charge of Simonstown. They looked dead and buried in this year's quarter-finals, trailing St Peter's, Dunboyne by 11 points at half-time yet summoned the character of the great Meath teams that O'Rourke himself played on and fought back for a famous win. They took care of Wolfe Tones in the semi-finals to return to tomorrow's final against Summerhill, the winners in 2011 and 2013.
Neutrals who turn out at Páirc Tailteann will be looking for something special from either side, to prove that they really are something special and that Meath club football is on the up again. "This goes in cycles," said O'Rourke. "Even at St Pat's, we've had a down cycle for the past five or six years, we've struggled at all levels in Leinster and I don't know why. We seem to be putting as much, if not more, actually definitely more than ever before, into it but we just haven't been able to compete so maybe it's a cyclical thing as well.
"But the quality in Meath is just not there at the moment."
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