Former Dublin footballer Alan Brogan maintains that the Meath rivalry meant no more to Dublin than any other provincial clash during the latter stages of his career.
Writing in his Irish Independent column - and an excellent one at that - Brogan explained how he 'felt' Meath's decline on the pitch, and was never overly concerned about the Dubs being turned over by the old enemy after Seán Boylan's departure.
You wouldn’t go so far as to say Meath were an irrelevance to Dublin in the latter half of my inter-county career," Brogan writes, "but we didn’t spend any more time or invest any greater emotion into beating them in the past few years as we did any other Leinster team."
That, given the very prominent part of the Dublin psyche they used to occupy, represents a skydive from grace.
People throw their eyes up to heaven and get sarky on Twitter when pundits talk about hunger or belief, but I could tell from the body language of the Meath teams we played against at the back end of my career that they had no real belief that they could beat us.
I have no doubt about that whatsoever.
I could sense it. I could feel it. And when you have that over the opposition, they’ve no chance.
So that’s issue number one for their new management.
Brogan expanded upon his thoughts on Meath's new managerial team in his column, but also maintains that Meath's quality deficiencies in relation to their neighbours are somewhat exaggerated.
Good management, he says, can bring more out of Meath's current crop.
You hear stuff all the time about Graham Reilly being the only Meath player who would get a game for Dublin or Donal Keogan being the only Meath player who would get a game with Dublin but that’s nonsense.
The reality is, there’s plenty of them good enough to play for Dublin if they get the right sort of support from management.
You can read Brogan's full column in the Irish Independent, and it's a good'ne.
