Meath boss Brennan: 'We'll keep the Leinster flag flying in All-Ireland semis'
Meath boss Robbie Brennan has vowed to keep the Leinster flag flying after his team withstood a ferocious Sunday afternoon comeback from Galway to seal their place in the All-Ireland football semi-finals next week.
Dublin have been the eastern province's only representatives in the last four for the last 14 years, Kildare in 2010 being the last time someone other than the 31-time Sam Maguire winners have made it this far from their environs.
Meath haven't been there since 2009 when they lost by four points to Kerry and they are the last Leinster representative other than the Dubs to have made it as far as the last day itself. That was in 2001 when they were well beaten by Galway.
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Meath v Galway: Three key moments
They came to Croke Park this weekend having already beaten Dublin and Kerry, the first county in nearly two decades to manage that in the Championship, but with no concrete reward for it given the lost Leinster final against Louth in between.
'The Leinster final probably stood to us,' said Brennan. 'We said in that dressing room that we'd be back here this year. No matter what we had to do with it, we'd get back here. And we knew then we were back and this was our opportunity.
'Like, we're probably lucky. Is that what everyone says? We keep getting lucky. We were lucky against Dublin. We were lucky against Kerry. And I guess we were lucky again today. So, we'll see who we get in the semi now. And we'll have to be lucky again, I suppose.' And, to think, it's just two years since they won the Tailteann Cup under Colm O'Rourke.
Leading by six points here with only 15 minutes to go, the tables appeared to have turned definitively on a game that had started slowly but then gathered speed when Galway hit them for 2-3 in just five minutes.
Meath's response was heroic.
The Leinster runners-up hit back with 1-3 in the next seven minutes to give themselves the leeway needed to get over the line, the electric Jody Morris getting that goal shortly after an effort off the ground was fingertipped around the post.
'It's that character piece, and we didn't panic. I was in here yesterday and I saw a few examples, maybe, of panicky shots and stuff, and we didn't do that, even when that squeeze came on, and we just kept waiting and trying to build and build and build. Again, I keep referencing, but the Leinster final is a massive learning.
'Like all of those games, you have to take learnings from them or else what's the point of doing them? And I think we've put a lot of those learnings from that Leinster final into place and now we're the last team in Leinster now and, as I said outside, we'll keep the flag flying.' Brennan's Galway counterpart Padraic Joyce cut a disconsolate figure as he sat and soaked up the questions on the whys and the hows. Ultimately, he said, his team just hadn't been good enough against a Meath side given due credit.
'We just didn't get to the levels of the game and we didn't really perform the way we should be performing. It's hard to figure what's going on. We had a poor first-half and in general, in fairness, Meath probably left us in the game as well.
'Then when we came back to go three up we probably thought that our experience might get us over the line but we gave away a short kickout and got dispossessed too easily and we conceded 2-6, 2-7 in turnovers.' It was announced last October that Joyce's term, renewed in 2022 until the end of this season, was to be extended through to 2026. He has held the reins with his native county since 2019. They have won the last four Connacht titles and lost two All-Ireland deciders.
If this felt like the end of something, though, Joyce wasn't providing a full stop when asked what his thoughts might be for the road ahead.
'We've just gone out of the Championship so I'm not going to make any rash decisions. We'll sit and chat. There's a lot of lads in there with decisions to make about next year as well, as we have as a management, so we will do that in due course.
'The county board have always been very supportive of me and the players so we will sit down and get things properly organized. Whatever will be will be. There will be no statements or no rushes coming out the next day or two anyway.' ENDS -- Brendan O'Brien Assistant Sports Editor and Sports Writer Irish Examiner (Dublin Office) Mob: 00353-86-606-1386 Twitter: @byBrendanOBrien
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