O'Brien to rally team for Dublin clash

FOR A man about to take Meath to Croke Park as favourites to beat Dublin in the Leinster championship for the first time since 2001 Eamon O’Brien doesn’t seem very worried. But then O’Brien doesn’t look like the sort of man who gets very worried about anything.

“I’ll let you do the thinking on that,” he tells us, when asked if he thinks a week will be long enough to focus the Meath minds on Dublin. Indeed, O’Brien has some other things to think about, such as the list of injured players, and loss of first-choice goalkeeper Paddy O’Rourke through suspension.

In his second year as Meath manager, O’Brien doesn’t carry too much baggage from previous Dublin’s defeats (Meath lost last year’s quarter-final to Dublin 0-14 to 0-12), although he’d prefer to have a full panel.

“If you had the full panel to pick from. Like, we have loads of little knocks there. A week doesn’t give you much time to get ready. If you had two weeks, it would be a bit better. That’s going to be worrying now. Trying to get our troops ready for next week. I didn’t see Dublin last week. We saw a few minutes of it. That was all.”

But perhaps the extra game will give Meath an extra edge? “No. It’s the opposite. I think that’s taken an awful lot out of the lads. Injuries aside, there’s not a lot of time to recover when you’re going from week to week as well. Fellas need two or three days to recover. That’s difficult for amateur players.”

Still, O’Brien could take plenty of positives from Saturday evening in Tullamore – particularly the way they killed off Laois this time: “We did nothing different, just the breaks went for us. We got a couple of goals, and the breaks fell for us,” he modestly agreed. “Especially for the second goal. It was always going to be uphill for Laois afterwards, and we were in the driving seat once that went in.

“They were always chasing the game and we were able to respond on the quick breaks because they had to come and attack us. It’s pleasing to win any time. I’m just delighted to get across the line. The lads worked hard and they applied themselves well and if they do that, they can be hard to beat.”

So, instead of taking on Dublin as he’d hoped, Laois manager Seán Dempsey is now preparing for next Saturday’s first-round qualifier against Tipperary. He’d few complaints about Saturday, but Dempsey reckoned they’ll need to improve again to beat Tipperary.

“There won’t be anything easy against Tipperary,” he said. “It will be a tough match in Thurles, but we feel this squad is strong and is young and we feel we can give a performance the next day . . . You are not going to win championship matches against quality teams like that if you’ve two thirds of your chances missed. The lads are down but we’ll pick ourselves up and get on with what we have to get on with.”