Manager suggests that one incident cannot be examined in isolation

Like many in Croke Park on Sunday Eamonn O'Brien didn't see Joe Sheridan's controversial goal. The sequence of events leading to the score happened so quickly that the Meath manager, like many others were left asking afterwards what exactly had occurred. There was no replay of Thierry Henry's goal on the big screens in Paris that night last November. There was no replay of Sheridan's strike on Croke Park's big screens . Perhaps taking a cue from their friends in Paris, the Croke Park powers-that-be felt it would be better not to show what happened for fear of sparking a riot. For a few seconds on Sunday it did look like the big Louth following were about to invade the pitch and exact their own retribution. When the time came to sit down and talk to journalists afterwards O'Brien was not disputing that Louth had a reason to feel aggrieved. He conceded that they played the better football, that they were the more enterprising side for much of the afternoon. He hadn't seen the goal at the time and was reluctant to comment. He admitted Louth were the better side. One thing he was certain about was that there were "loads of decisions" that went against Meath that could be disputed. "I can recall three or four balls we were blown for picking off the ground that I didn't feel were picked off the ground," he told the Meath Chronicle. "Nigel Crawford was booked and Louth got a point off it," he added. "The game goes for 70 minutes, the decisions are made and you live with them, that's the way I see it, sometimes they go against you, sometimes they go for you. A lot of them went against us today." He said he was "pleased" that Meath were now Leinster champions. What he was not happy about was the performance of the team. Maybe Louth did deserve more than what they got? Sport can be cruel, he added and Meath have suffered from sudden twists of fate that went against them in the past. The manner in which Meath won the breaks they got against Dublin suggests that somebody up there is looking down on them favourably this year although O'Brien could have done without all the controversy. He had come to Croker for a Leinster title, no strings attached. He didn't "begrudge" the players their success, they had worked hard for it. "I thought Seamus Kenny was going to score the goal, if he had scored there wouldn't be any of this talk about giving Louth a replay. "I didn't know what the position was, the green flag didn't go up, I had to wait until the referee went in to the umpire " I don't know where this talk about a replay is coming from? "Do we go back and look at the decision against Nigel Crawford from which Louth got a point, if we had lost by that point would anyone be suggesting that Meath should get a replay. "We either bring every decision of a referee under scrutiny or we leave it alone, you can't just scrutinise one incident. "That's my honest opinion, whether it relates to Meath or Louth or any game, I'm reacting to the question about whether Louth should be offered a replay and I haven't seen the incident at this stage," added the manager. Crawford joined O'Brien and the Meath captain admitted that the manner in which the game was won had taken the gloss off the occasion. The cup was in Meath hands yet the players were "shellshocked" by all that had happened. He bemoaned the fact that Meath's goal was the chief talking point rather than the reality that Meath had just won their first Leinster title in nine years. "If the goal had happened in the first minute there would be no talk about it. A number of incidents happen in a game that can be debated and turn it around, it just so happens this one was in the very last minute. It's just very unfortunate for Louth," he added. He accepted a suggestion that the pressure of clinching a first title in so long may have got to Meath. The team simply didn't get going in the second-half with only character carrying them through the many sticky patches. Manfully, the players kept working away despite falling three points behind after JP Rooney skilfully swept home his goal. "That's possibly one positive we can take from the game, we stayed calm when it looked like the game was gone from us," he said. Overall though the performance, he admitted, just wasn't good enough with the Dublin display papering over "frailties" in the team. Frailties Peter Fitzpatrick's men almost made hay from.