By Paul Keane

Meath manager Andy McEntee is keeping his fingers crossed that there is one more peak in what has been a roller coaster Allianz football league Division 2 campaign for the county.

The former Meath player is six games into his first league campaign as boss and has witnessed both the best and worst of his team. 

Meath took a solitary point from their first, third and fifth games in the campaign, against Kildare, Down and Cork respectively, eking out a draw with the Rebels.

Yet they won their second, fourth and sixth games, against Derry, Galway and Fermanagh, highlighting their ability to bounce back from adversity but also their lack of consistency.

The end result heading into the final round of group games this weekend is that Meath can still gain promotion to Divison 1 if they beat Clare, in Ennis, and if Kildare do them a favour elsewhere by beating Galway.

"I think there's been a few dips, it's been up and down but generally the trajectory seems to be turning upwards," said McEntee. "There is a good feeling around the place and the more competitive games you play the more fellas begin to understand what I'm looking for, what we're looking for as a management team, and that seems to be creeping through.

"When I look back on the Cork game, we got something out of a game that a lot of people wouldn't have expected to get something from before the game started, and especially when we went nine points down. 

"They showed something there, they also showed bits that I wasn't happy when we went level with 10 minutes to go but they still showed something to come back into a game that looked dead and buried against them.

"We showed something against Galway. We were a couple of points down with not long to go and we turned that one around. We showed something again yesterday against Fermanagh. When our appetite is at the level it should be at, we've shown that we're competitive at that level. So I think we're getting there, slowly."

Meath suffered punishing Championship defeats to Westmeath and Derry in the last two seasons under former boss Mick O'Dowd, coughing up big leads on both occasions, and McEntee said the results have taken a psychological toll.

"That's the biggest challenge," he said. "Physically, you can get fellas...you know, you run more - you get fitter. You spend more time in the gym - you get stronger. But the mental side of things only comes with digging out a few results and working hard together.

"That's a thing that takes a little bit of time but when you start seeing things working out and start seeing results, when players start to see that the things you're looking for actually gain results for you, it can start to snowball quickly enough then.

"I'd like to think the last couple of weeks that fellas can appreciate that when we do certain things we get certain results and that helps us to get confidence in what we're doing and what they're doing."

McEntee, brother of former Meath star midfielder Gerry, a current selector, was also part of the 1988 panel that retained the All-Ireland for the Royal County.

Meath consistently had Dublin's number back then but, like the majority of teams in the province and country now, have fallen well behind the Sky Blues in the pecking order.

McEntee's ultimate task with his native county is to bridge that gap though he acknowledged it's 'a big, big gap' and that some players around the province are probably intimidated by the task.

"That's probably true," he said. "They look at it and think 'no matter what we do we're not going to beat Dublin'. There seems to be a bit of an attitude of that out there. But we've got to learn to crawl before we can run.

"We have a lot of games to play before we can even think about playing Dublin. People are looking and saying 'how are we going to get to that level?' I think it's important for us involved that we don't even think like that, that we concentrate on ourselves and try to get ourselves the best that we can be."

*** Andy McEntee was speaking at the launch of the Electric Ireland GAA Minor Star Awards. The inaugural awards will recognise the best individual performers from the entire season, including provincial and All Ireland stages, with the best player in each position selected on the 2017 Electric Ireland GAA Minor Star Top 15.**