Former Meath player Anthony Moyles was on OTB AM to speak about his former side’s chances against Dublin in the Leinster final.
While Moyles didn’t say that Meath were going to pull off a shock victory against the Dubs on Sunday, he did point out a few things that could help them against the All-Ireland champions.
“I don’t think Meath will deploy a sweeper system. I think it’ll go against what Andy [McEntee] believes in, I think it’ll go against essentially what Meath football believe in and I don’t think we’ve done it well over the years.
“I think we will get players back and get bodies back but essentially I think they’ll decide no, we’re going to try to push up on them and go as high up the field as much as we can,” Moyles said.
While using an attacking style of play against the most gifted attacking side in the country is a risk, Moyles believes that it’s the only way the Royals can hope to match Dublin.
“So you saw a little inkling of it against Donegal in the League final. They squeezed Donegal in that first 15, 20 minutes and they cleaned Donegal out. Now it was an extremely high tempo game. Massively high tempo game.
“You needed unbelievable conditioning and fitness to do it because you’re squeezing right up onto the keeper, you’re pressing them right into the corners and you’re trying to turn them down there.
"Which is what Kildare did [against Dublin], by the way, pretty successfully at times but just didn’t capitalise on it,” Moyles explained.
Moyles accepted that Dublin were going to create more scoring opportunities than Meath, and more importantly convert those opportunities, so for Meath to stay in it he said they must score goals.
“If I was talking to the forwards I’d say a point is the least that you should be looking for. Any time you get around a corner-back or a full-back or you manage to get a one-on-one with a guy and you slip him, you have to think goal here in this situation.
“If we get 10 to 12 scoring opportunities in the first half we have to be thinking at least 50% of them have to be goal opportunities. Now eventually you may have to fist it over the bar but you have to get it in that close.
Meath take on Dublin in Croke Park at 4 pm on Sunday and will attempt to stop their old rivals from winning a ninth Leinster title in a row. Meath have had an impressive season so far, getting promoted to Division 1 in the League, but the odds are still firmly stacked against them.
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