Colm O'Rourke admitted his Meath side were handed a "reality check" in their 11-point loss to Derry in the pair's Division 2 encounter in Owenbeg.
Meath entered this afternoon's televised top-of-the-table clash buoyed by wins over Cork and Clare, O'Rourke's team racking up seven goals in the opening two rounds.
However, they fell to earth with a thud in a lopsided loss against Derry, Rory Gallagher's side offering them a bracing reminder of the current pecking order.
The Ulster champions had a goal on the board inside 50 seconds, Ethan Doherty spinning away from a tackle and firing a shot underneath Harry Hogan's body.
In the final play of the opening half, Niall Toner coolly slotted home at the end of a characteristically patient move to leave the score at 2-08 to 0-03 at the break, the contest effectively settled.
"We're trying to build a team and it's going to be a rocky road," O'Rourke told RTÉ Sport's Damien O'Meara afterwards.
"It'd be much easier to be commenting on the game tonight than to be actively participating in it!
"We know where we are, we got a reality check. We won our first two games, we knew it wasn't all going to be smooth. So, we have to go away and re-evaluate it.
"We were very poor tonight, we were very disappointed with our performance. But we'll be better the next day."
O'Rourke was confident his team would react well to the loss, though he acknowledged that they'd need to review the performance.
"We thought we'd be competitive with Derry, we thought we'd make a right match of it. But the reality is the game was over before half-time. We're disappointed with that.
"The players themselves are disappointed. The reaction of players in defeat tells you a lot about the kind of men involved. And I'd be very confident we'll get a very, very positive reaction from our players.
'We're trying to build a team and it's going to be a rocky road' - Colm O'Rourke reflects on Meath's reality check after their heavy loss to table toppers Derry in their Division 2 encounter #RTEGAA #AllianzLeagues #GAA pic.twitter.com/3Tsml4T5YZ
— RTÉ GAA (@RTEgaa) February 18, 2023
"I said to them inside that we'll move forward. But we do have to have a review of this. Look at the thing and see what we can learn from it.
"We've a lot of new players there, they're inexperienced, they're maybe lacking a bit in confidence. And the harsh realities of playing football at the top level, Derry were a top four team last year.
"We're quite a bit below that. We want to get up there. And if we want to get up there quickly, we need to learn quickly from tonight."
"We've got to live with each other's imperfections but you'd love to be perfect." - Rory Gallagher
Derry boss Gallagher sounded breezily content by the manner of his team's display, though he was still inclined to acknowledge the various imperfections.
"Happy, yeah. I think we won the game in the first half, the elements got a lot tougher in the second. It wasn't an overly significant breeze that we had in the first half and I thought we played some good football.
"We'll see how the next couple of weeks go. We have three games in the next 14 days. It's like the moving day in the golf. We'll see where we're at at the end of that.
"We had a decent pre-season. The McKenna Cup is very valued. And we've had a decent start to the league. We wouldn't say we're at top form or anything like it but we're finding more form.
'It's (this period) kind of like the moving day in the golf, we'll see where we are after that' - Rory Gallagher assesses things after his side's handsome win over Meath in a wet and windy Owenbeg #RTEGAA #AllianzLeagues pic.twitter.com/UHwfYK2yoV
— RTÉ GAA (@RTEgaa) February 18, 2023
"You'd love to play the perfect game. I probably felt there were a couple of soft ones (conceded). Even in the second half, we won a long kick-out and Ethan (Doherty) was breaking. And he'd been given it, we could have scored a goal.
"But you've got to live with it. We've got to live with each other's imperfections but you'd love to be perfect."
