A year that started out with realistic hopes of attaining that much sought after triumph in the Christy Ring Cup petered out into frustration for the Meath senior hurlers as they suffered big disappointments in that competition and the National League. By Paul Clarke. Meath started 2008 with four successive wins at Pairc Tailteann - three of them in the Kehoe Cup and a runaway success over Derry in Div. 2B of the league - but they failed to build on the momentum which that productive opening to the campaign might have generated and will be operating in Div. 3 of the league and in the lower Nicky Rackard Cup next year. The main aim for the year was to win the Christy Ring Cup and manager John Andrews and selectors Paul Donnelly and Colm Lynch must have been particularly pleased with that 1-25 to 0-8 victory over Derry in the league opener in February which followed wins over Athlone IT, Trinity College and Wicklow (at the semi-final stage) of the Kehoe Cup. It was very early days, but the signs were positive. The winning trend was broken when poor defending proved costly in the league game against Carlow at Dr Cullen Park and they lost by five points, but they were later to gain revenge on the Carlow men when a superb performance yielded a 1-25 to 0-17 victory in the Kehoe Cup final at O'Moore Park, Portlaoise. Summer hurling had arrived at that stage as Meath and Carlow shared the Portlaoise stage with the Kilkenny and Offaly teams which clashed in the Leinster Championship in the main course on the menu, but that impressive Royal County showing wasn't a sign of things to come. Meath had already failed in their bid to qualify for the knockout stages of the league. Apart from the victory over Derry, they also defeated London and Armagh, but the losses to Carlow and Down were damaging in light of a change in the structure of the competition. It was only during the journey to Keady for their last league match against Armagh that Meath officials received confirmation that there would be no quarter-final place for the third placed team in the division, as had been the case in 2007 and, effectively, that rendered the fixture meaningless. Instead, Meath would have to play in Div. 3 in 2009 and another unsatisfactory situation was the change in format of the Christy Ring Cup from four-team groups to three-team sections. Still, it was a case of having to get on with it and Meath opened the competition at Pairc Tailteann where they beat Mayo by four points. They achieved the minimum requirement of gaining a victory, but it didn't do a great deal for their score difference and Meath knew how costly that was after they had lost to Kerry in an amazing match at Tralee. They scored 4-13 - a tally good enough to win most games - but the concession of seven goals was very costly as the Kingdom tallied 7-11. A defeat of less than five points would have been sufficient to see Meath through on a day when Mike Cole was sent off late in the first half, but instead of looking forward to the knockout stages they were concentrating on survival. When they defeated Roscommon by 3-19 to 3-6 in a relegation play-off at Mullingar it looked like they were safe - but they weren't. As part of a proposal to reduce the Christy Ring Cup from 12 teams to the eight which contested the 2008 quarter-finals, Meath were set to suffer in a big way as they were demoted to the Nicky Rackard Cup. Meath did win the Kehoe Cup this year, but there can be no denying that it was a difficult and frustrating campaign. Selector Paul Donnelly was disappointed by the way things worked out. "We started the year by winning four games in a row, including against Derry in the National League," he reflected. "We did well in that game, but I remember their manager Brian McGilligan saying that they had a very young team out. "Bad defending cost us in the league game down in Carlow. We got off to a great start, but we were slack up the middle of the park that day. We were always under pressure and found it hard to get scores. We were unlucky not to get a goal in the second half. "Losing that game was an awful big disappointment after putting in such a big effort in training. We had big numbers out." That was the first of two league defeats which Meath suffered, the other being against Down at Pairc Tailteann, while they scored other wins over London and Armagh. "The structure of the league changed unknown to us," Donnelly added. "We were travelling to play Armagh when we got confirmation of that. There were no quarter-finals this year. We won that game, but we still went down. "That was very disappointing after travelling up to Keady. It was a good win. Armagh are always tough to play against. Maybe they are the up and coming team. Being relegated in the league was a disaster. "There was a lull in the camp for about a fortnight after that and there was a break then for the club championships. We had to get relegation out of our minds and concentrate on the Christy Ring Cup. "A mess was made of the competition with only two group games. It was awful. We knew we had the beating of Mayo, but we just didn't get a big enough score against them ahead of the trip down to Tralee to play Kerry. "We had a lot of injuries going into the Kerry game, but we knew that if we played well we could beat them. Mickey Burke got a knock on his back playing football and we were also missing David Donnelly, Joey Keena and Eoin Brislane. "He was making a great recovery from a knee injury, but later suffered a wrist injury while playing with Toomevara. He was a huge loss. He later went on to be man of the match in the Tipperary final." Of course, giving away so many goals was a huge factor in Meath's defeat down in Kerry. "We leaked seven goals in that game," Donnelly recalled painfully. "Whatever you do, you can't afford to leak goals like that. When we were in trouble we brought Mickey Cole back to act as a sweeper and we got a goal and a couple of points after that. "But he was very harshly sent off. We had to regroup again after that. David Crimmins got a very hard knock which affected him in a big way. We were five or six points down at half-time, but we came out for the second half and got a couple of goals and went ahead. "Then we leaked another goal. Unfortunately, with so many players missing our bench wasn't strong enough. That was a factor. It was very disappointing." Things got even worse when Meath later learned that they would be playing in the Nicky Rackard Cup instead of the Christy Ring Cup next year. They had already beaten Roscommon in a relegation play-off, but it counted for nothing. "And then we are regraded back to the Nicky Rackard Cup because of a change of format," Donnelly added. "It was another big blow to hear that news. It was a disaster." That just added to a series of disappointments for Meath, but what happened in 2008 happened and it's now a case of looking ahead to 2009 for the senior hurlers. "I believe you should be allowed to have a panel of 30 or 35 players," Donnelly said. "You will have injuries and lads dropping off the panel. If we had the bigger panel we could play games among ourselves instead of having to organise challenge games. Tweet

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