A couple of weekends ago thousands of Meath fans travelled down the M6 for their second championship game of the season.
On the road to Tullamore, there was finally an air of expectancy. Three years under the management of Mick O’Dowd and Meath looked to have gone backwards rather than forward.
2017 will be different they said, we have a new man in charge and he is brilliant.
As Andy McEntee stood on the sidelines in front of a packed out O’Connor Park there is little doubting that this was his most important match at the helm of Meath to date, their first real challenge in Championship football.
No Meath fan really knew where the team were at in terms of competitiveness come throw in and the common consensus was that the victor would finally establish themselves as the undisputed number two in Leinster and possibly, for the first time in seven years, dethrone Dublin.
Nobody could call it really, Kildare were installed as slight favourites after gaining promotion to the top tier of the National League earlier in the year and had previously beaten Meath sizeably in the opening game of both their campaigns.
However, from the get-go, there was only one winner in that match and it was the Lilywhites, they were a class apart.
Nine points they were the victors by and in honesty it should have been more, only some heroic full back line defending prevented a cricket score.
There were positives from Meath: Cillian O’Sullivan continued to establish himself as one of the country’s top young players and despite not showcasing his full ability, Donal Lenihan still shined bright.
All in all, though, Meath were outclassed in every facet of the game from the kick out strategy to the presence of the full forward line and literally everything in between.
Possibly the most striking aspect of the defeat was the manner in which they conceded their second goal. Supporters that have watched Meath from as recently as the late 2000s and any time before that will tell you that David Slattery would have been dragged, punched and kicked to the ground long before he could set up a scoring opportunity for Daniel Flynn – this wasn’t the Meath way.
WATCH:
Daniel Flynn scores @KildareGAA's second goal of the game! What a run from David Slattery! #LeinsterSFC #GAAclips pic.twitter.com/Q9BB24oQI4— eir Sport (@eirSport) June 17, 2017
There was very little fight from the Royals that day; their ‘hard men’ persona has long since disappeared.
Rewind to February, Meath’s league was a dry run for Andy McEntee, a chance to get his side playing the way he wanted and for the most part it was positive.
The opening game of the campaign struck fear in Meath followers after a humiliation at the hands of Kildare. It was followed up with a big win over Derry, the team they lost to in the second round of the qualifiers in 2016 despite having a seven point lead at halftime.
Meath nearly snuck up to division one after a narrow win over Galway started a push for a promotion but gifting Down their first win in two years a week prior showed that they were a long way from where they wanted to be.
Championship then came around sooner than maybe Andy McEntee would have liked but despite sloppy defending Meath overcame Louth 0-27 to 3-09, an impressive score to put up by any standard.
Now they face Sligo, and it’s another chance for McEntee to show have far down the road he is with his side.
There’s no doubting that he’s the man for the job, his track record speaks for itself.
When he took over with Ballyboden St.Enda’s they were barely in the reckoning, the Dublin Senior Club Championship seemed destined for St. Vincent’s yet again but it didn’t pan out that way.
Every step of the way Ballyboden were meant to be outdone whether it be against Portlaoise in the Leinster Championship, Clonmel Commercials in the semi-final or heavy favourites Castlebar Mitchels in the final.
Through it all, McEntee became the miracle man and it wasn’t the first time he’d pulled off something like this.
In 2012 when he was over the Meath minors, they scraped past Longford by a goal in their opening game in the Leinster Championship. They then went on to lose to Dublin in the Leinster Final by 15 points.
Fast forward a couple of months and Meath were threading along nicely and somehow found themselves in an All-Ireland Final, against Dublin again.
It was not to be a fairytale ending however, Dublin had too much fire power with Cormac Costello, Niall Scully and Eric Lowndes among the class of 2012 but the match summed up how far McEntee brought his minor side – they lost by six points that day. He had made them competitors.
This weekend’s match will tell another chapter in the tale of the McEntee story.
Meath fans will arrive at Páirc Tailteann with the same feeling as the one they felt driving to Tullamore, hopeful uncertainty.
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