Alan Brogan says the famous Dublin-Meath rivalry has lost its edge since Sean Boylan ended his Royal reign over a decade ago.

Writing in the Irish Independent, Brogan recalls how Meath were a team to be feared when he first came on the inter-county scene, but such has been their decline since the glorious Boylan era ended that they're now treated just the same as any other team by the all-conquering Dubs.

"You wouldn't go so far as to say Meath were an irrelevance to Dublin in the latter half of my inter-county career, 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," he noted.

"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."

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