Trevor Giles and Mick O Dowd
Having won three Leinster titles in his 12 years with Meath, Trevor Giles can remember a time when things were different in the Leinster Football Championship.
In fact, Giles played in an era – 1994 to 2005 - when the provincial title was up for grabs every year, a time of unprecedented social mobility when Laois, Westmeath, Kildare and Offaly all won Leinster Championships.
Giles himself won three Leinster titles with Meath (1996, 1999 and 2001), before retiring in 2005 just as Dublin embarked on a remarkable run which saw them win 10 of the next 11 titles on offer.
Right now, it is hard to see anyone challenging Dublin’s dominance, but Giles is adamant that Meath have players with the right mentality to force a change.
“No doubt things will change,” Giles says. “You look at the Leinster rugby team, a few years ago everybody was saying they were brilliant, their academies were brilliant and attendances were great.
“But once you lose a couple of players, the likes of Brian O’Driscoll, they are hard to replace. I think things will change a bit.
“I would think the players that Mick (O’Dowd) and the selectors are picking, they’d only be picking them based on them having that right mind-set.
“The likes of James McEntee, a young player, he’d have that mentality. Donal Keogan would epitomise that big-time. I would say the fellas Mick will have in there will have that belief absolutely.”
Giles has worked with Meath as a selector for the last three years, but has stepped aside for the 2016 season and is no longer involved in manager Mick O’Dowd’s backroom team.
Trevor Giles
He is perfectly qualified, therefore, to give an assessment of why Meath have struggled so much in the provincial championship in recent years, and he keeps coming back to injuries to key players.
“That’s the big regret of my time being involved over the last three years, we just never got to pick our best team. I know everyone has injuries but just to compete with the top teams we needed to get our best team out,” he says.
“Look at Conor Gillespie, just incredible that his knee has curtailed his involvement. He got an ACL done in one knee and his other knee then started giving him trouble.
“To not have him, Kevin Reilly, Shane O’Rourke, you’re talking about physically big players. In fairness to those three, they would have worked really hard to try and get over their injuries.
“That’s the big regret, that you never had your full team out, just to see how good you would have been on the big days here.
“That’s just bad luck. It’s just bad fortune.”
Since making his senior debut for Meath in 1994, Giles has been involved with Meath in some capacity – as a player, physio and selector – for 18 seasons, but he has taken a complete break this year to focus on work.
“I suppose I had played for 12 seasons with Meath, done two years with Colm as a selector with the U21s, had done a year as a physio with Séamus McEnaney, and then three years with Mick O’Dowd," he explains.
“Mick was staying on for another couple more seasons and I just had to weigh it up. I think for the good of the team, a change in selector is a good thing, good to hear a different voice.
“My two boys are five and seven, my girl is nine, they are involved in athletics, Gaelic, loads of stuff. And I am enjoying that now, bringing them to that and coaching them in some of the sports.
“I work for myself as a physio – it is just myself in the physio clinic and if I am not there, there is nobody there. I felt I had given it a lot and really enjoyed it.”
Trevor Giles was speaking at the launch of the 2016 EirGrid GAA Football U21 All-Ireland Championship. Click here for more details.
