O’ROURKE SETS TONE FOR HIS MEATH TENURE
The former RTE pundit continued: “I am around long enough to have seen successful Meath teams.
“I was fortunate enough, along with Gerry McEntee, who is here tonight, to have been part of a great team in the ’80s and we also had a great group in the 90s.
“We have a great tradition and history of football in Meath. It’s a wonderful county. We have fantastic clubs. We have wonderful people involved.
“I have always said that I could not understand why Meath could not be the Kerry of the East.
“We have huge numbers. We have great enthusiasm. We have a passion for the game, which is the equivalent of anywhere else, including Dublin, or Kerry, or Galway or Tyrone.
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“And we shouldn’t accept our standards to be any less than those.
“So that’s the bar we set and I’m sure it’s the same thing every manager who came to a County Board (meeting) since Sean Boylan said.
“This is what we are going to do and this is what we aspire to but we have to aspire to that.
“But those sort of words that I speak tonight, they are not of any value if we don’t carry it out.
“So I want to see a Meath team going to Croke Park with aspirations to win, with people wanting to support the team.
“That we get back the passion that was there among supporters through all my time playing football. That we see big crowds out for the League matches starting next February.
“That we see kids on the streets wearing Meath jerseys, and that we can go to play anybody.”
O’Rourke believes the younger generation of Meath players have been “burdened by maybe the weight of expectation and our traditions in the past.”
He continued: “But every team must make their own tradition. Every team must build their own history and we want to start that straight away.
“It’s going to be a great and enjoyable voyage. I’m quite sure everybody will give us great support in doing that.
“It will be a rocky road. There will be plenty of bumps on the way and we are going to have a review in two years’ time.
“I hope in two years’ time we will be significantly improved from what we are now.”
O’Rourke praised all the managers who had followed in Sean Boylan’s footsteps but struggled for success.
“I’d like to say too that we have had a lot of very, very committed people who have managed the team over the last 20 years and through no fault of their own they haven’t had success,” he said.
“It wasn’t that they didn’t put in the effort.
“Sometimes it took a lot out of them because they were so concerned and so worried and so honest about it.”
Advisory
The double All-Ireland winning player indicated that he was still finalising his management team, which currently features former Meath forwards Stephen Bray and Barry Callaghan, as well as Boylan in an advisory capacity.
O’Rourke also unveiled plans to club delegates for regional trials in autumn and winter similar to those run by Pat Gilroy when he came on board as Dublin manager in late 2009.
The regional trials will commence after the end of the club championships and last between four and six weeks, guaranteeing players a minimum of three games to impress.