They’re an easy team to love, their wholesome Cinderella story, rich set of characters and indefatigable spirit chiming with so many over the last year or so. Come up against Meath, however, and it’s a different story.
“It becomes a little bit of a game of chess which is frustrating at times,” said Dublin manager Mick Bohan after running into Meath’s green and gold wall in the Leinster final.
Even for Bohan, one of the great innovators, coming up against Meath’s counterattacking unit has been a real head scratcher. Something entirely new in the women’s game.
“The way they play,” explained Donegal manager Maxi Curran after losing to Meath in the recent All-Ireland semi-final, “numbers don’t really affect them all that much. It’s not as if there are man markers or people left free, they just kind of mark anybody. To be fair, it works very well for them.”
Even Meath manager Eamonn Murray quipped this week ahead of Sunday’s TG4 All-Ireland final that opponents Kerry “play pure football, no auld defensive system like us!”
The thing is, pulling all those bodies back behind the ball, working like dervishes to win back possession and then tearing forward in numbers has proven mightily effective and the expectation is that Meath will retain the Brendan Martin Cup on Sunday.
“People might say that it’s a bit of a boring game but I think that we add excitement when we work together and trap girls and overturn a ball and break at speed,” said Meath’s Niamh O’Sullivan, nominally a forward but ultimately a worker bee like the rest of her team-mates.
“You don’t know what you’ll get. The great thing about our team is that anyone can score on the day. We have a great range of shooters. Even from the corner back up to the full-forward line, it can be anyone, just that pace we have.”
One passage of play from late in Meath’s semi-final win over Donegal sums up how they go about their business. Surrounded and apparently penned in close to her own endline and the corner-flag at the Hill 16 end of Croke Park, Emma Troy somehow toe-tapped and soloed her way out of trouble, beginning a snaking, counterattack move that ended with Emma Duggan kicking the insurance point for Meath in a two-point win.
At this stage, the opposition know that Meath are going to play that way but knowing it and stopping it are two different things.
“We were told at the start of the season that we would need to be ready to adapt,” said O’Sullivan. “The management team of Eamonn and Paul [Garrigan], Shane [Wall] and Mark [Brennan] who are behind our tactics, they have done Trojan work to come up with new ideas.
“Because we knew teams would look into us, look into each individual player. And they have done that. But we’re still coming out with the wins. A lot comes down to the management team and the effort they put in behind the scenes. I haven’t experienced a management team like them, they’re fantastic. We’re blessed to have them on our side.”
To keep that sort of game going for 60-plus minutes requires high conditioning and fitness and that’s where Eugene Eivers, Meath’s strength and conditioning expert, comes in. A decade ago he was part of Jim McGuinness’s Donegal set-up when, in similar jerseys and with a similar playing style, they won the men’s All-Ireland. Eivers has been linked with a role in the new Colm O’Rourke-led Meath men’s backroom for 2023.
“Eugene is fantastic, he has a programme set up for us and if anyone is coming back from injuries or anything like that, he’s on to them straight away,” said O’Sullivan. “We all have a programme to do and he’s there supporting us and telling us every week what we have to do and giving our schedules. He’s fantastic, amazing, it’s a privilege to be working with him.”
Schoolteacher O’Sullivan kicked three points in last year’s final win over Dublin, her third proving to be the clinching score late on in a typical narrow win.
“I’ve never seen the dressingroom as quiet,” she recalled of the aftermath. “I think we all couldn’t believe it. It took a while to sink in.”
And the medal, where is that? Sitting on the mantelpiece?
“It’s still actually in the box,” said the Royal Gaels attacker. “You do look at it every now and again, kind of to pinch yourself that it did happen. It certainly will go up on the wall. Hopefully we’ll have a second one to go beside it.”
