Round 4 Qualfier: Armagh v Meath

[RealSpiritof98]

Excellent performance from our lads, proud of each and everyone of them. Must say the Meath crowd were a class act, wishing us well after the game. To their fans, dont be disheartened you only have to look at our progress to see how easy it is to turn it round. When the final whistle went you could see how many fans we had fair play to all the supporter who traveled down. Away to get dried.

[BennyCake]

Probably the best Armagh performance in 10 years. Great result. Every man give his all. Very proud of the team, so I am.

[rrhf]

Can I just get in before the rest of my fellow county men and wish Armagh the best for the year.  If they win the all Ireland I will be a good Christian and give them the credit they deserve.  We all know what happens the year after Armagh win all Irelands.

Ah bless - did you take down your wee bitter topic from this morning and me having a great day in Dublin and never got to read it.

Enjoy your success.

[Gaffer]

Probably the best Armagh performance in 10 years. Great result. Every man give his all. Very proud of the team, so I am.

  You re talking like Baker Bradley , so you are

[BennyCake]

Probably the best Armagh performance in 10 years. Great result. Every man give his all. Very proud of the team, so I am.

  You re talking like Baker Bradley , so you are

Aye, I am, so I am. The only thing missing is a Paisley-like 'ssss' at the end.

[Sea The Stars]

It's very disappointing from a Meath point of view to go out again after a Leinster Final loss and a Round 4 loss. You can't have any complaints though. Armagh were way the better team and they're ready for a crack off Donegal.

I don't like to see the overreaction though from Meath fans. It's not as if this wasn't coming. Everyone knew it could happen. Someone said Daire Rowe is not playing because he's for Syddan. That is hilarious. Rowe is only a minor and will get plenty of chances soon. He's a promising footballer. Awful siege mentality going in Syddan !

Ard Ri - You are an example of another Meath fan who needs to calm down too. You've mentioned a load of players that aren't good enough yet have put all this faith in Newman, Wallace and Cillian O'Sullivan. The reality is these 3 aren't much better than the players you are giving out about. O'Sullivan has played a game and a half in the League and you are completely overestimating him. Next year after a few bad games, will you be putting him in your other list? Eamonn Wallace has to come back from a serious injury. There's no point writing off 7 or 8 players and then hoping the rest will turn out to be saviours. The reality is all those players are around the same level.

Also don't agree with the S&C argument. Meath are as well conditioned as Armagh. There's room there for improvement for sure but if you came up with a measure of S&C of all county teams, Meath would fare as well as most. Again the reality here is not good enough when it comes to playing football. The passes, the shooting, the fumbling were all evident yesterday, why overlook these and blame S&C?

The unfortunate reality is Meath were not good enough to win yesterday. The better team won. On a different day you might have had a different result, who knows. For now, it's best that Meath take the positives from the year and come back again and regroup for next year and stick to the original target of top 8 (Division 1 & QF's) next year. That's a realistic aim. Every will agree Meath are in the top 12 but are struggling to make the next step.

[Sea The Stars]

Better team won.

Better organised and more dominant physically. They use the ball better and more purposeful in attack. They look more confortable on the ball where our lads are skittish.

Well done Armagh - hugely admirable performance and a display of all that is good about the game.

I don't agree, juice. I can't remember ever feeling as disillusioned, dispirited or disheartened as a Meath football man. We are at a sad low ebb. Our ineptitude is unbelievable. Our skill levels are unacceptable and our tactics are stone age. The only consolation is that we have good, earnest people on the field an on the sideline and we kept our dignity. But we're back at 1980 level as regards our ranking in football and I can't see any prospect of progress, short of starting from scratch with a ten-year programme of player development.

I would tend to agree with the main points in these posts.

Hardy - I wouldn't be so as down as you. I think there is hope for Meath to keep progressing although All-Irelands are a million miles away yes. But Division 1 next Spring is realistic and losing the next few Leinster Finals to Dublin is probably also realistic ! At some stage we might get fortunate in a Round 4 Qualifier.

Our ranking is top 12 if you read much into those things. I don't think too many will argue.

The frustrating thing is this time last year, Meath people would have taken a game with Armagh for granted. No disrespect to Armagh. It's frustrating to see how Armagh have passed Meath out even since the League. That is probably what annoys a lot of Meath people too.

[lynchbhoy]

I'd not be too despondent if I was a Meath fan. Not nice to lose but there is a young talented squad there. Injuries have robbed them of a few good men also.
Meath clubs were poor and standard of club football heavily criticised all through the 90's so that's a non issue. Derry have great club football standard - no use to the county team results.

A few players mentioned like Wallace ( both of them) might never be good enough , as while they have speed- they still lack a lot of basic skills. That can improve though.

Plenty of skillful players there but they need a mix of brawn and speed too. Not sure if Mickey Burke can do it as he is suited to a style from decade ago. Carroll quick but might have difficulty taking tactics on board as he only knows one way. Still all may have a place in the jigsaw.

Odowd and giles might be showing their lack of experience and I'd not have promoted them so quickly into the jobs they have. A few more years on the management and coaching/tactics learning curve would have benefited them and the future county team.
A more exp and Wiley tactician like Davy Nelson or Andy Mcentee would IMO have been better in the current set up. Though Sean Kelly and Colm Brady bring huge positives to the management.
A few decisions and the changing style of play didn't help matters esp in the forwards but maybe I'm being harsh on mod as injuries have enforced changes all the time.
Am happy with young Flanagan as he looks to be a combo of meade's aggression and gillespie's silky footballing passing skills. Clonard in prev seasons had been complaining about him being overlooked so fair play to Mod as he does seem to be giving every good player from every club a shot! Syddan will just need patience!
It would poss have been better for Mod to have came on to the mgt when this squad had a few more years on them but there is talent there again.

Prob wasn't fair to play the game in croker as so many Crossmaglen players would have the benefit of too much game time in hq 

[lynchbhoy]

And congrats to Armagh
Great perf from a good side in terrible conditions
An enjoyable game and both sides competed well - Armagh deserved the win as their delivery movement and attacking tactics were superior

[Ard-Rí]

It's very disappointing from a Meath point of view to go out again after a Leinster Final loss and a Round 4 loss. You can't have any complaints though. Armagh were way the better team and they're ready for a crack off Donegal.
I don't like to see the overreaction though from Meath fans. It's not as if this wasn't coming. Everyone knew it could happen. Someone said Daire Rowe is not playing because he's for Syddan. That is hilarious. Rowe is only a minor and will get plenty of chances soon. He's a promising footballer. Awful siege mentality going in Syddan

I'm not from Syddan, nor do I even like them. I just see the fact that Daire Rowe is a better footballer than Joey Wallace, and the fact that we're picking lots of Ratoath footballers for the panel - and just about the whole lot of them are not cutting it. It's not an overreaction when a team has produced not only the worst performance in modern Meath football history, but also limp out of the championship with another soulless display. It's not good enough, and if you're happy enough not to react to it, then you're happy enough to see it go on year after year. This is the third year we lost a Leinster Final (first by 3, then by 7, and this year by 16) and then on each occasion got knocked out in the round 4 qualifier. That is not progress.

Ard Ri - You are an example of another Meath fan who needs to calm down too. You've mentioned a load of players that aren't good enough yet have put all this faith in Newman, Wallace and Cillian O'Sullivan. The reality is these 3 aren't much better than the players you are giving out about. O'Sullivan has played a game and a half in the League and you are completely overestimating him. Next year after a few bad games, will you be putting him in your other list? Eamonn Wallace has to come back from a serious injury. There's no point writing off 7 or 8 players and then hoping the rest will turn out to be saviours. The reality is all those players are around the same level.

I've watched Cillian O'Sullivan playing for years, come back to me this time next year and tell me I've overestimated him. That lad is the pick of the bunch if he can stay fit. Newman and Wallace both proved they could produce it at the top level last year, unfortunately this year has been a disaster and we have not seen as much from Newman and Wallace of course is injured. There is no point in not writing off the 7 or 8 players. If they're not good enough, they're not good enough, simple as that. Try somebody else. But don't leave them in there just because we're not bothered making the effort to try others. Same thing with Joe Sheridan and Brian Farrell last year. They weren't good enough anymore. There's no room for sentimentality.

Also don't agree with the S&C argument. Meath are as well conditioned as Armagh. There's room there for improvement for sure but if you came up with a measure of S&C of all county teams, Meath would fare as well as most. Again the reality here is not good enough when it comes to playing football. The passes, the shooting, the fumbling were all evident yesterday, why overlook these and blame S&C?

Some of those stem from Tactics as well which is an issue, but a lot of those errors come from Strength and Conditioning. If you are telling me that you think say, Brian McMahon, has the appropriate S&C work done, then you have to be watching a different game. Dalton MacDonagh I'd say likewise. We can't make a ball stick in the forwards, the reason is our lads are not strong enough. On the other side of the coin, you have Menton, Tormey etc. who do seem to have the work done so perhaps it's a case of the player-centred programmes that are at fault.

The unfortunate reality is Meath were not good enough to win yesterday. The better team won. On a different day you might have had a different result, who knows. For now, it's best that Meath take the positives from the year and come back again and regroup for next year and stick to the original target of top 8 (Division 1 & QF's) next year. That's a realistic aim. Every will agree Meath are in the top 12 but are struggling to make the next step.

There are sweet FA positives from this year. One of the worst years I've ever seen in Meath football, and if something like that can't motivate change then we'll go nowhere for a very long time.

[Ard-Rí]

On a side note; credit Armagh, they deserved to win and you'd have to think they'll give Donegal a good game at the very least in the QF.

[rrhf]

Has the big windmill debate caused problems within the county. 

[Sea The Stars]

Ard Ri, you could be right about Cillian O'Sullivan. He could turn out to be a great footballer but I'd be a bit more cautious. He is no impressive than Graham Reilly or Damian Carroll were at their age. You might also have watched him for years but you haven't watched much of him in the last 2 because he was in Australia a lot of last year and injured since the middle of February this year. Again another reason to be cautious when rating him. He's missing a lot of football at a crucial age.

I agree with you there's no obvious evidence of progress and yesterday had a touch of the soullessness about it. But on the Ratoath thing, the underage teams have been dominated by players from Ratoath recently. I don't think there is any bias there. Daire Rowe is by all accounts a great prospect and I'm sure will get his chance in time. To be fair to you, the Joey Wallace thing hasn't worked but it was a gamble the management thought was worth making. Who knows what he was doing in training. If you've seen Cillian O'Sullivan for years, you've surely seen Wallace a bit too and he's been an obvious candidate as one who stands out.

[lawnseed]

Its just starting again on sky. Get the full value.. Watch again

[illdecide]

Enjoyed the game yesterday bar about 7-8 mins of the first half where we switched off but in fairness Meath hit a few cracker pts during that spell. Jamie Clarke didn't have a good game but keeping him on still takes the attention of the opposing teams best defenders... I thought S Campbell, A Mallon, big Charles where best for Armagh, A Kernan was quiet first half but had an impressive 2nd half. Some people around me were giving off when mistakes were made but it was obvious people like that never played the game as any player will tell you playing in them conditions yesterday would be impossible not to make mistakes.

I was very surprised with the crowd there yesterday, I thought Armagh had the biggest support there and we would have had the longest journey to make, def thought the double header would have attracted about 45000 but there you go. Looking forward to Donegal next week which will be a tough ask but we have a chance