McGill hoping Ratoath can complete epic rise

All-Star nominee Conor McGill has admitted Ratoath’s journey from the junior ranks in Meath to the brink of senior success has been a rapid one.

It’s just seven years since the east Meath outfit were junior champions — they only went senior for the first time in their history after their 2015 intermediate triumph. Now they are favourites for senior success approaching Sunday’s county decider against Summerhill, who were runners-up in 2017 and 2018 and champions as recently as 2013.

Ratoath was a village of around 1,000 when McGill was born in the 1990s — now there’s over 10,000 living in the commuter belt town.

“Six or seven years ago, we won the junior championship so it’s been a quick turnaround,” said full-back McGill.

Thankfully the underage teams right the way up have been strong and those players are really coming to the fore now. There’s top class footballers coming through all the time. Seeing the senior team going well now, the young lads coming through are hopefully saying to themselves, ‘I want a bit of this’.

Ratoath duo McGill and Bryan McMahon were part of the Meath team that reached the All-Ireland quarter-final group stage last summer. But it was speedy ex-county attackers Eamon and Joey Wallace that impressed most for the Davy Byrne-managed club in their semi-final win over Gaeil Colmcille.

Ratoath trailed by four points at half-time in that game but dominated the Kells outfit in the second half when they outscored them 2-9 to 0-4. Meath U20 Daithi McGowan came off the bench to score a late goal while county U20 captain Connell Ahearne was an unused sub.

It underlined the club’s depth, with neighbouring towns noticing a similar rise in numbers. McGill said: “Donaghmore-Ashbourne have been in a couple of finals in the last few years, just didn’t get over the line. Dunboyne obviously won it last year and hopefully we’ll get over the line and get the job done ourselves.”

McGill is wary of a seasoned Summerhill in the final. “They beat us already in the group stage, so we know what they’re all about,” he said. “They’ve been in regular semi-finals, finals, have actually won the title a few years ago. We can only look at where we can improve ourselves and just go after another performance.”