Close your eyes and squint a little and there is more than just a hint of footballing royalty off the Tailteann Cup final.
Meath and Down, two counties you expect to be in the lifelong members club of the games top table.
On the one hand, they want to advertise how good the competition has been and how valued it is for them. On the other hand, to have the usual Tailteann Cup cliches trotted out but this time about them would be tough to take.
You know the ones: great for teams to be competing with 'teams at their own level', for them to ‘get big days in Croke Park’ and giving the players from ‘lower tiers a chance to win something’.
In their psyches, that’s not Meath's or Down's place in the world. Yet here they are.
To be fair, right from the start of the competition both managers have been the ultimate pragmatists. Make no mistake, both Colm O’Rourke and Conor Laverty are proud men and winners, they are not meekly accepting their new reality. Instead, one senses they are taking this hard, humbling medicine with a steely belief that it will make their future return to the top all the sweeter.
So what of Saturday? On the face of it, it’s a game that whets the appetite. Two teams with serious football potential. And it is all about the potential. The age profile and the recent underage success of both counties point to teams more likely to play on the front foot, dreaming of what is possible, in contrast to more experienced teams, where the scars of battle tends to lead to more sensible, risk averse football.
Yet, the modern game has made us all a bit wary of expecting classics. The excitement that greeted the quarter-finals spoke of our eternal optimism when contrasted with the grim reality that we all endured.
Classic or not, what we can be certain of is two teams set up defensively, Colm O’Rourke having grudgingly accepted the necessity of playing the numbers game at the back a la…well, a la just about everyone else.
It's what happens then that things get interesting. Down’s game is built around brilliant pace and superb interplay. Watching them against both Cavan and Laois, was stunning. On both occasions they looked like a team that would challenge any in the land. They are blessed with searing pace in the likes of Liam Kerr and Danny Magill, which makes counter-attacking football a natural fit. The old hall marks of classy footballers are still present too in the likes of Ceilum Doherty, Ryan Johnston and Eugene Brannigan, while in Pat Havern and Odhran Murdock, they have that perfect combination of finishers with size and power.
It is of course all too easy to get wrapped up in those two eye-catching performances. The days when everything clicks for a team is not the norm. Down are not suddenly an unstoppable force. Next year they will still be a Division 3 side. They were in bother for a good while against Longford, while Meath themselves beat them in the group decider. That day, their shooting percentage was woeful and a world away from the Harlem Globetrotters performance we witnessed in Croker three weeks ago.
However, that Laois performance will have sent out the warning to Meath in terms of the goal threat Down carry and what their A game looks like. They will know that the one place they cannot want find themselves is chasing Down players towards their own goal. Of course, the alternative is to be goalside and facing the Down blitzkrieg attacks. That at least gives them chances to force them into wider channels and slow them down.
Attacking against a great counter-attacking team like Down gives two options. Either you try to avoid turnovers completely, such as Dublin did so well over the years or for a more modern iterative see Derry. Both demand high levels of coaching and time to develop but are consequently difficult for a new set-up to accomplish from the off. The alternative is to ensure you are always set up defensively and the key there is to have top quality men up top to both win ball and make something happen without the full team supporting cast.
Crucially, Meath have the perfect inside line ingredients to allow this. Jordan Morris is in ridiculously good form at present with his Tailteann Cup tally already at 3-19. Against Down, he was picked up by Downs best man-marker and captain Pierce Laverty and still scored 1-03. While teams get criticised about being overly reliant on one man, having that one man remains crucial and, for me, he is the standout forward on the pitch. In big games that can be massive. Alongside him he will have Matthew Costello. Like Murdock and Havern, Costello is a big man but with skill and feet in abundance. Aaron Lynch in the other corner isn’t exactly score shy either. Between them, they scored 2-10 out of Meath’s 2-16 against Antrim, 2-08 of which was from play.
The ability to play to their inside line while keeping defensive cover will be the Meath plan. I don’t see Meath winning in a shootout, however, so their success depends more on their defensive solidity and middle third athleticism. Here their mixture of experience in Donal Keogan, Padriac Harnan and James McEntee, and runners in Harry O’Higgins, Jack O’Connor and Ronan Jones, looks promising.
Coming into this final, Down are the team who have displayed the higher performance level in recent games. Being in Division 3 next year also means they have most to gain. Losing and being stuck in the Tailteann Cup next year may be a dose of humility too far and bottom line they have the pace and flair to thrive in a Croke Park final.
After that round three win, O’Rourke said that Meath showed some of their old traditional traits in finding a way to win a game that hung in the balance. Well, nothing could be more traditional for Meath than relishing the opportunity to take a strutting opponent down a peg or two. So, while I have Down to win, Meath have way more than a fighting chance. And who knows, maybe we’ll get that classic too!
Watch the Tailteann Cup final, Meath v Down, on Saturday from 2.30pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player, follow a live blog on RTÉ.ie/Sport and the RTÉ News app or listen to live commentary on Saturday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1
