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.

That all changed when Seamus McEnaney took over last season. When Meath reached their last Leinster final, on that fateful day against Louth in 2010, McAnarney didn’t lift a finger. Tomorrow he will lead the side in the pre-match parade. It’s a startling and belated turn of fortunes for a man who is already 31 years of age.

“Things went well for me [last year],” he explained.“Seamus gave me a chance at wing-forward for most of the league. When championship came along I started corner-back against Kildare, Things didn’t go well, I was taken off. Rightly so. If you are playing well you’ll be playing and that’s the motto.”

A rematch with Louth in the All-Ireland qualifiers followed. McAnarney went into it unsure of his place but ended up starting and acting as jailor to Paddy Keenan from centre-half back and he hasn’t looked back since.

“Different managers see different things in different players. Seamus stuck with me. It worked out last year for me. Hopefully it will continue.”

McAnarney’s story is one that begs an ascent up the Hogan Stand steps and a thrust of the Delaney Cup skywards, if only because it would offer hope to all those young footballers and hurlers whose hopes of making it with their counties or clubs have been derailed by a train wreck of an economy and the necessity to purchase a ticket for destinations further afield.

Half a decade was spent in New York and London working as a carpenter and lining out with the local sides. He played against Mayo in Gaelic Park in 2004 and for London in Ruislip a year later against Roscommon, losing the first by a landslide and the second by one, agonising point. In most other ways, the experiences were equally enjoyable.

“It was an honour for me playing for New York. It was my first inter-county game. I’ll never forget it. That’s where it started. I am where I am today because of it. Same with London. I met some great players from all over the country.

“Lads who have played minor and U21 with their county. Some lads may have played a bit of senior and then had to go because of work or whatever. Some very talented footballers, they work extremely hard for one game.”

When he was younger he was the 35th man on a Meath U21 panel of 35 and thus never handed a jersey but always kept faith that the phone would ring – even when his number was extended by international dialling codes – and it finally did in 2005 when Barry punched it in.

His first game was one of those afternoons that meant everything to a first-timer and less than nothing to everyone else: an O’Byrne Cup game against DCU when a 12-minute cameo and one-point haul carried a value far above the norm for January.

It was six years later when another nondescript occasion, a Fitzsimons Cup game in October, offered a first opportunity to lead the side out but Kenny’s cruciate ligament injury and absence through to 2013 pushed him front and centre against Kildare and will do again today.

“Unfortunate for Seamus,” he said. “He’s a great leader and he still is. To me he’s my captain, He’s still our captain. A man coming into the dressing room [after the Kildare game] two days after an operation and he is still driving us on. The delight on his face after the game was great.”

McAnarney, too, has every reason to smile.