By John Harrington

Meath hurling is still surfing the feel-good wave generated by their 2016 Christy Ring Cup Final.

That success came at a perfect time for the Royal County because it gave a huge surge of momentum to the good work that was already being done in Meath at underage level.

A generation of children is emerging in the county who are hurling-mad, and having a successful county senior team to look up to will only accelerate their development.

Outstanding Meath centre-back Damien Healy is one of the hurling heroes they’re now looking up to, and he’s loving the sight of the sport going from strength to strength in the county.

“Everyone in the county wants to play hurling and you see kids walking around the whole time now with hurls in their hands," Healy told GAA.ie.

“We did a meet and greet last week and there were 300 kids at it. We never really had that before or seen that before in the county.

“There are so many clubs now in Meath that are really thriving. The Division A does be so competitive now at underage in Meath, and the Division B.

“Where maybe if you go back five years ago there were one or two teams dominating the whole time. Now hurling is massive.

“You wouldn't be able to drive through a village or a town in Meath without seeing a young lad with a hurl pucking around which is great to see, it's fantastic.

“Meath hurling is definitely on the rise and it's exciting times.”

Meath upset the odds when they defeated Antrim in that 2016 Christy Ring Cup Final, but they’ve proven since that it was no fluke because they’ve continued to improve as a team.

Promotion was finally gained from Division 2B last year and they held their own comfortable in Division 2A this year, and Healy is confident they will only continue to get stronger and stronger.

“I definitely think we've made progress since the Christy Ring,” he said. “We won the League last year as well which had been haunting us for years, we just couldn't get out of Division 2B.

“It was a big step for us and I would put that up there with the Christy Ring in terms of progressing as a team. We went up to the Leinster round-robin last year and we won our first game.

“In our last game (against Westmeath) we were only two points away from going into the Leinster quarter-finals and the All-Ireland Qualifiers.

“Westmeath went on and pushed Offaly hard in the Leinster quarter-final and then lost by only nine or ten points to Tipp so we weren't far off.

“I think we are at a cross-roads at the moment. We are pushing forward, we have progressed, and I think we'll continue to progress because we've a stronger panel now than we've ever had."

Healy believes new manager Nick Fitzgerald has risen standards since taking charge of the team for this season.

Former international long-jumper, Ciaran McDonagh, is now the team’s S&C coach and Healy reckons he’s gotten the Meath players stronger and fitter than they’ve ever been before.

Fitzgerald also brought in Kilkenny hurling legends Martin Comerford and Mick Kavanagh as selectors, and their winning mentality is rubbing off on the players.

“They just don't take losing. Losing is not in their brain, it's not in the way they go about things. It's just win, win. That's just the way they've been bred, I suppose.

“It's great to have them in the dressing-room and it's great to arrive at training and they're out there on the pitch, two legends of hurling, really.

“They've really brought their experience to the thing but they're learning too as managers and selectors because it's their first big job.

“But from what I've seen so far, it's been very positive from them.”

Meath’s McDonagh Cup campaign will tell us exactly how far they’ve come in the last couple of years and what sort of journey they still have to travel.

The bookies have given them considerably longer odds than any of the other five teams in the competition, but this Meath team have proven in the past that they love nothing more than proving their doubters wrong.

“We'll be underdogs against Antrim on Saturday and in all the other games too,” said Healy.

“I think it's a status that suits us a small bit. I think we thrive on that. We were underdogs in a lot of the Christy Ring games when we won it that year and it drove us on an awful lot.

“Even in a lot of the League games, and I know we came up a Division, but we would have beat London and Kildare before yet we were still underdogs.

“It's something that doesn't bother us at all. If anything, we thrive on it and it helps us.”