McCoy looking forward to clash with Dubs

Dunboyne's Gavin McCoy got a small taste of what it is to be a Meath senior footballer when he was part of the extended panel in the latter stages of the 2018 campaign and he is hungry for more and made his debut in last Saturday’s O’Byrne Cup win over Laois.

An exceptional centre-back who was one of the foundation stones of Dunboyne's Keegan Cup success this year McCoy was brought in to the Meath camp before the O'Byrne Cup final in May and while his spell was short-lived he is hoping it will become a more regular aspect of his footballing life and he is eagerly looking forward to Sunday's SF challenge against Dublin. 
“I can't wait. This will be my first real experience of being involved with Meath as I have really only joined the panel this year. I cannot wait personally, hopefully we'll come out on Sunday and put on a show for Sean and his family,” said McCoy. “It has always been an ambition of mine to play for Meath. I have been developing over the years and now I am so proud to be here, thank God Andy (McEntee) brought me into the panel and hopefully I can show everybody what I can do. 

Meath and Dublin players with Sean Cox's wife Martina and son Jack at the launch of the Meath v Dublin SF Challenge

“It is a proud moment to be called into the Meath panel. I am going to take it in my stride and savour every moment, even at training. I love training, I'm always training and I'm going to keep going and hopefully produce performances, push on and hopefully we can push on in Leinster and then on into the Super 8s.”
Like everybody else in Dunboyne McCoy was devastated to hear the news of the attack on Sean Cox in Liverpool last April and he is willing to do anything he can to help his club mate in his recovery.
“It has been a really tough time for the club. At the start of this year we did a LipSync challenge fundraiser in the club and Sean was our mentor, he helped us during that whole process and we really got to know him then,” recalled McCoy.
“Knowing him as a person and just how cheerful he is, he has always been there to support everything in the club, so to hear that news it was devastating and such a tragedy. Trying everything we could to help Sean really motivated us throughout the whole process of the championship. Every time we went onto the field we thought about Sean and how we might be able to impact on him.
“It wasn't really mentioned too much in the dressing room, but everybody knew it was on everybody's mind, it was one big motivating factor. Everybody had their own mentality to deal with it in different ways. We just considered how we might impact the family, the community and we went out to perform to the best we could and hope it would have a positive impact on people's mentality.
“Going through the championship with the tragedy on our minds it got us through a lot of wars, I think that was one of the main things that got us over the line,” concluded McCoy who looks set to be one of the new stars as Meath plot their way back to the top table.