The 16th Man

WHAT goes around, comes around. And Meath are finding this out now.

Few people in the Royal County really enjoyed the way they won last year’s Leinster title, but many were happy to hang on to the trophy given the nine year gap back to their previous provincial win.

The right thing to do would have been to offer Louth a replay, a rematch that Meath would most likely have won under the circumstances.

Instead, they pushed on leaving most observers of the opinion that the Wee County were the rightful Leinster champions, with Joe Sheridan’s late goal robbing them of their moment of glory.

And since then Meath have had little joy.

In their very next game they were tanked by neighbours Kildare in the All-Ireland quarter-final. They started well, but for most of the match they played like a team weighed down by the controversy of the previous weeks.

Just a few short months later manager Eamonn O’Brien was shown the door.

It was a shock move at the time, though it was clearly a manifestation at the discontent clubs felt over the county board’s handling of the Leinster final mess. O’Brien was merely an unfortunate casualty.

The process to find his successor was far from clean and clinical, with Seamus ‘Banty’ McEnaney finally emerging as the last man standing. But the appointment of an outside manager didn’t sit well with everyone in a county so rooted in tradition.

So now Banty, the genial Monaghan man with no ties to last year’s Leinster final, finds himself in possibly the hottest seat in the GAA right now.

After a shocking League campaign he gambled big by bringing 38-year-old Graham Geraghty back into the panel after a three-year absence from inter-county football.

The stakes would have been even higher had fullback Darren Fay accepted a similar invitation and perhaps McEnaney should be thankful that the 35-year-old former All Star turned him down.

Neither of these moves met with the full approval of selectors Liam Harnan and Barry Callaghan and over the weekend both of them withdrew their services in frustration at their lack of input into team affairs.

Banty is back to his preferred two-man backroom team of Paul Grimley and Martin McElkennon, but he hasn’t reached this point in a manner of his choosing.

His future could now hang on as flimsy a thread as the outcome Sunday week’s Leinster quarter-final against Kildare.

Anything less than a win could see him sent on his way by clubs eager to flex their muscles again. The latest chapter in the ongoing fallout from last year’s Leinster final.