Meath Forum

Club Championship 2025

(Oldest Posts First)

Club championship draw is this Thursday night @8 o'clock. Very early compared to other years. A good group draw could open up pathway for many teams to go far. Teams that could possibly win the Keegan cup this year include summerhill Dunshaughlin dunboyne ratoath skryne tones Ashbourne and simonstown

Royale1 (Meath) - Posts: 11 - 21/01/2025 11:16:28    2586754

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Conor O' Donoghue said in the podcast his personal preference would be for two 8 team Senior championships, a Senior A (with the top eight teams) and a Senior B (with the weakest 8 Senior teams) so that the strongest teams will be playing each other all the time and as a result the Meath champions will perform much better in the Leinster Senior Club.
His argument on those grounds doesn't stand up in relation to what happened in the 2024 Championship as Dunshaughlin on their path to winning the Keegan Cup beat all four of the previous years semi finalists and one of the other Group winners and yet performed poorly in the 1st round of Leinster.

madmeath (Meath) - Posts: 87 - 22/01/2025 12:51:18    2586943

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Replying To madmeath:  "Conor O' Donoghue said in the podcast his personal preference would be for two 8 team Senior championships, a Senior A (with the top eight teams) and a Senior B (with the weakest 8 Senior teams) so that the strongest teams will be playing each other all the time and as a result the Meath champions will perform much better in the Leinster Senior Club.
His argument on those grounds doesn't stand up in relation to what happened in the 2024 Championship as Dunshaughlin on their path to winning the Keegan Cup beat all four of the previous years semi finalists and one of the other Group winners and yet performed poorly in the 1st round of Leinster."
I don't think you can rubbish is argument based on 1 year tbh. I would assume he's talking about it over a sustained period of probably 5/8 years.

If you have a highly competitive senior championship consisting of the 8 best team playing each other and the best players playing each other in games with very little margin for error and doing this on a regular basis over the course of 5/8 years you would be very hopeful of the standard improving significantly and you would like think this would have a positive effect on our leinster club championship performances but as I said you would have to judge on a period of years and not on one year

Blackspot09 (Meath) - Posts: 1036 - 22/01/2025 13:33:08    2586950

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Replying To madmeath:  "Conor O' Donoghue said in the podcast his personal preference would be for two 8 team Senior championships, a Senior A (with the top eight teams) and a Senior B (with the weakest 8 Senior teams) so that the strongest teams will be playing each other all the time and as a result the Meath champions will perform much better in the Leinster Senior Club.
His argument on those grounds doesn't stand up in relation to what happened in the 2024 Championship as Dunshaughlin on their path to winning the Keegan Cup beat all four of the previous years semi finalists and one of the other Group winners and yet performed poorly in the 1st round of Leinster."
Im not arguing his point, but how does a restructure of our championships suddenly make Meath football better? Is it not as simple as if we don't have the players then we wont succeed? Dont get me wrong there is plenty of talented footballers in meath but how does simply restructuring a championship make us better? Am i the only one who thinks this?

overtheendline (Meath) - Posts: 7 - 22/01/2025 13:43:02    2586955

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Replying To overtheendline:  "Im not arguing his point, but how does a restructure of our championships suddenly make Meath football better? Is it not as simple as if we don't have the players then we wont succeed? Dont get me wrong there is plenty of talented footballers in meath but how does simply restructuring a championship make us better? Am i the only one who thinks this?"
It wouldn't suddenly make it better and I listened to the podcast and to be fair he never implied it would make it better straight away.

But it's common sense to assume that a highly competitive 8 team senior championship would improve standards over a period of 5/8 years.

Blackspot09 (Meath) - Posts: 1036 - 22/01/2025 14:04:12    2586960

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Replying To madmeath:  "Conor O' Donoghue said in the podcast his personal preference would be for two 8 team Senior championships, a Senior A (with the top eight teams) and a Senior B (with the weakest 8 Senior teams) so that the strongest teams will be playing each other all the time and as a result the Meath champions will perform much better in the Leinster Senior Club.
His argument on those grounds doesn't stand up in relation to what happened in the 2024 Championship as Dunshaughlin on their path to winning the Keegan Cup beat all four of the previous years semi finalists and one of the other Group winners and yet performed poorly in the 1st round of Leinster."
Not an overly bad idea to be fair, because I do agree that playing the best teams in the county with no 'easy fixtures' means you need to be on it constantly which over time would hopefully lead to better provincial showings and hopefully onto the county team as well.

My concern would be the format? Would it be 7 group games, everyone plays each other with top 4 into a semi? Or would it be 3-4 group games drawn at random, with top 6 in 1/4's and top 2 from Senior B? You don't want to leave teams with dead rubber games near the end of championship either. I didn't hear the talk so maybe this was discussed

ratlag (Meath) - Posts: 583 - 22/01/2025 14:06:39    2586963

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Senior championship draw:
Group a:
Summerhill
Dunboyne
Kells
Skyrne

Group b:
Ballinabrackey
Ratoath
St colmcilles
Seneschalstown

Group c:
Meath hill
Trim
Rathkenny
Dunshaughlin

Group d:
Ashbourne
Nafianna
Simonstown
Wolfe tones

Very hard to predict who'll get out of groups or win the championship without seeing the new rules in place yet, but I'd guess Summerhill and dunboyne to progress from group a. Ratoath and st colmcilles to make it to the quarter finals from group b. Trim and Dunshaughlin from group c and Ashbourne and Wolfe tones from group d.

Meathboyos86 (Meath) - Posts: 57 - 23/01/2025 22:26:18    2587246

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