By John Harrington

Meath football legend, Trevor Giles, says the Royals' new management team of Andy and Gerry McEntee won’t be able to make the county competitive again with the flick of a switch.

Both men are renowned for their passionate, hard-edged approach, but Giles doesn’t think that necessarily means they can imbue the county team with those same values.

Giles was a member of previous Meath manager Mick O’Dowd’s backroom team, and points out O'Dowd didn't lack for those qualities either.

“Lots of people have said that`(the McEntees can make Meath a more passionate team), and I don't disagree with it...but, like, Mick O'Dowd was a very passionate man (too).

“Micko managed Skryne to win a Championship, he got fellas in Skryne to play with passion that they didn't play with before.

“The same in UCD when Micko was running the show there, we won a Sigerson with great passion. A lot of people have said that the new management will put passion into certain fellas or make them work harder, inject never say die spirit.

“But that's a very difficult thing to inject into a person if it's not there or if it's not very strongly there. But yeah, lots of people have said that.”

Giles believes what has ultimately held Meath back in recent years is that they simply haven’t had enough players of the highest calibre to challenge the elite of the modern game.

“Yeah, I think it's the most important thing, the players,” he says. “I think you do need three or four really top, top players if you're thinking of getting into Division 1, or winning anything at provincial level or getting to the last eight.

“I would put Donal Keogan in that bracket. To me, Donal Keogan would have got on every single Meath All-Ireland winning team in defence. He absolutely would have. But you just need more than that.

“There's plenty of good lads in Meath that if you had those three or four lads, like Dublin have, they probably have seven, eight or nine, whatever they have, which is a bit exceptional, but if you had those top, top players then I think you have enough in the rest that would get you there.”

Giles had high hopes that up and coming Simonstown midfielder, Conor Nash, would develop into a senior inter-county footballer of the highest quality, so is dismayed the teenager will instead take up an AFL rookie contract with Hawthorn.

“You'd be waiting for some super stars to come up through the ranks, your top, top players and Conor Nash from Simonstown is potentially one of those players and he's heading off to Hawthorn now in a few weeks,” says Giles.

“Like, he was a minor this year but he didn't play with the Meath minors, I think he had study commitments, but he's playing midfield for Simonstown in the county final, himself and Shane O'Rourke.

“You were kind of looking for a top player to come through but when one does he's heading to Australia for a couple of years. That's the thing nowadays.

“We were all growing up when Meath were successful and all you wanted to do was play for Meath whereas now you're kind of saying, 'Jeez, Meath, will they get success?' So he's gone to Australia.

“He has Leinster rugby looking for him too if that doesn't work out.”

Giles hopes that the Meath development squads will start producing more top quality players now that they are better organised.

But he also believes clubs in the county must also start implementing organised strength and conditioning coaches if Meath are to close the gap on counties like Dublin in the short to medium term.

“The positive thing for Meath is that the last two minor teams have done the requisite strength and conditioning work, from under-16 on,” says Giles.

“They have three years work done. So the players coming through the last few years are much more capable of inter-county senior training.

“When we started, there were players we brought in who hadn’t done any strength and conditioning training. So you just couldn’t train them in any way hard.

“They were slow in getting that going. But any player now should be able to take on the training load. The only problem is that most of the clubs aren’t doing that. Still a lot of clubs training Tuesday, Thursday and a session at the weekend. Some doing a gym session, some aren’t.

“If a particular player has a good season with his club and you bring him in, if he hasn’t been on a development squad, it’s likely he hasn’t done any strength and conditioning. He’s not anywhere near ready to train for the senior inter-county team. That’s a problem.”