Reality check needed for meath

The way it is...with Anthony Moyles

So, I have started this article about 10 times already. I was going to go with the Munster final and the fact that Cork were robbed in the first game (the draw) due to some outrageous referee’s calls and how these calls are affecting teams’ seasons once again without anything being done about it.
I was going to talk about Donegal and how they are showing chinks in their armour.
I was even going to discuss Mayo and how they are looking the real deal (once again) with Aidan O’Shea in his new role.
But, none of these topics are what is really irking me at the moment.
What is though, is the fact that the Meath senior football team are out of the championship before July is out.
Throughout my career with Meath we unfortunately had early Summer exits too.
To be able to go to the Galway races as an inter-county footballer is a very bad sign. Even worse is if you can attend the Killarney races.
Another year, another disaster for Meath football.
So who is to blame?
Mick O’Dowd and his management team?
The panel of players?
The referee for giving Tyrone a penalty?
The weather?
The pitch?
The bus journey?
Maybe the fact that we were too far ahead against Westmeath?
The fact that too many Dublin people live in Meath (a really good one).
The best one of all - the Celtic Tiger (that Tiger has been blamed for a lot of things, but Meath’s football plight is probably pushing it).
The truth is, I do not know who or what is to blame, but what I do know is that no one really seems to care.
Let me say that again to all of the proud Meath supporters.
Who really cares?
For example count the amount of Meath flags in your local town/village for the last number of months.
Does anyone really seem to be bothered by the team’s exit?
Have people lost their desire to follow the team? Is it the teams fault?
Is it the lack of success that has caused this apathy?
Is it Dublin’s fault and the fact that they have won 10 out of the last 11 Leinster titles?
Or maybe, just maybe, its Meath supporters view of things.
I believe that we have to do two things and both are well within our capabilities.
Firstly, Meath football supporters and people have to forget about the past. They have to forget about the teams of the 1980s, ’90s and early 2000s.
Those days are over and we are in a new time. Our levels of expectations must be lowered. We are no longer a team that can win an All-Ireland and we have not been for a number of years.
We hanker back to the teams of the past and forget any of the dark days in between those years (which there were many of).
Supporters ,and maybe people involved in the media, set a bar based on these past successes and any team that does not measure up is useless. Supporters of Meath have to realise that we as a county have no, and I mean zero, right to think we should be beating anyone.
Before the Wicklow game in the first round of the Leinster championship this year I was at a small function prior to the game.
Throughout the function I asked people how they thought the game would go.
Every person to a man reacted in a similar fashion. They laughed and scoffed at the idea of Wicklow getting anywhere near us.
Now, the Meath fans were not alone in this assertion as Paddy Power had the spread in our favour by close to 20 points.
The only man who noted caution (and a sense of realism) was Sean Boylan.
At the function he said that every team has to be respected and that no matter what, that this was championship football.
How right he was as Wicklow got to within two points of a supposed stronger Meath team and very nearly won the game.
One of the things that left a really bad taste in my mouth during my career with Meath was how we were always being compared to the teams of the 1980s and ’90s.
People often said (and even some members of those teams prominent in the media) would say “ ah this team are not like the old teams, they haven’t got it”.
The question was, what was the IT that we did not have?
A lot of the years I played with Meath the teams trained as hard as I saw the team train in 2001.
The players pushed just as hard and sacrificed just as much.
The fact was this - a lot of the teams during the mid and latter 2000’s were not as talented as the previous teams.
We had moved from a very successful team of the late 1990s into the early 2000s and due to a number of reasons the team did not reach anything like the so called dizzy heights until 2007.
Every year, depending on the time that we exited the championship, the accusations of “soft” “not worthy of wearing the jersey” etc. would come out.
People did not countenance the fact that here was a team in transition.
Here was a team that had lost a host of All-Ireland medal-winners and leaders.
Here was a team that also had to contend with a number of different management changes.
Here was a team just re-building and not as good as before.
Instead those teams had to listen to a fair amount of abuse.
Quite often our team talks were not about defeating the opposition and showing them a lesson but actually going out and ramming our own people and supporters’ words down their throats. I quite often got the feeling that some people supporting us would nearly rather we lost so they could say “ I told you so.”
Now, imagine that?
Imagine Mayo, Donegal or Kildare players having to live with that, even in their darkest days.
It would not happen. Yet we as a team that went to two All-Ireland semi-finals in eight years (2002-2009) were regularly measured up to those past teams and admonished as “soft” and as “failures” because of their success and our lack of it.
A question to ask ourselves - What kind of Meath crowd would have gone to the Leinster final if Meath had beaten Westmeath in the Leinster SFC semi-final?
More supporters or less than Westmeath?
And if we had been beaten by Dublin would Meath supporerts have clapped the players off the field just like the Westmeath fans did?
My answers: LESS and NO.
So what can be done about the current plight of Meath football?
What can be done to make Meath great again?
What can bring us back to that top table?
Today is not the day for specifics as it will take more than these words to outline that plan and smarter people than me to flesh it out.
But what we can do is think about the first steps.
In my view the initial requirement is that we all must look at what we do for Meath GAA and then forget our own interests.
Naturally every player, manager, administrator and supporter has a certain interest at heart.
What needs to be done is that we need to maintain that interest, but also to realise that there is a bigger picture in play now.
This picture is the Meath senior football team.
We need to ask what we CAN do. Then we MUST stop doing what we have been doing for the last 15 years and blaming someone or something else.
We need to look at the senior football team as the headquarters of an organisation and that we (no matter what level) are working in whatever capacity below it to make that HQ great.
We need to take a look at ourselves and decide what we are giving back to Meath football.
Regardless of your standing within a club we need to get out there and realise that we are all working towards a greater goal.
Who cares if I just managed an under 14 team to the Division 1 final, if I just played my strongest team all the way along and steamrolled everyone.
We should look to the manager who develops players both strong and not so strong with a view that as these kids develop, quite often the big 14-year-old may become the small 21-year old.
What I am talking about may seem like a massive undertaking, but it is not.
We are already doing it to a certain degree. We just need to bring it all together under the one ethos.
I know for a fact that massive work is already being done within clubs to develop talent and culture.
This must continue and be rewarded.
Things do not just happen overnight and instead of looking to blame others, harping back to the past or indeed looking to the far-off hills, we need to grasp the now.
We should encourage innovation and ideas.
We should appreciate help and open up our clubs and teams to new ideas and involvement.
We need to remember what it was that made Meath teams great.
We need to remember hard work, never say die attitude, willingness to help every man or woman beside you no matter what the cost, is what’s required. We had it before so let’s get it back.
Stop looking after your own little patch and be willing to look at what more you can do to help the greater cause?
Not - there is nothing I can do.
If things don’t change they will stay the same.
Let us ensure that does not happen.