O'Reilly well able to hold his corner

Mark O'Reilly

Club: Summerhill

Age: 24

Height: 5' 9"

Weight: 12st

Honours: All-Ireland SFC 1996, '99, Leinster SFC 1996, '99, 2001, Leinster U21 1996, '97, Leinster MFC 1993, All Star 1999.

Corner back Mark O'Reilly's experience this season reflects that of the Meath team. Uncertain at the start, improving and hitting an awesome register against Kerry in the semi-final. He acknowledges that at the start of the championship he lacked fitness and felt exposed in the Leinster championship match against Westmeath.

"The first day I wasn't on my game. I suppose it was the kick you need to knuckle down and put in a few weeks of hard training, do a bit on my own and get the fitness back. It took me a while. Even against Kildare in the first half I wasn't at the races but after that fitness and sharpness improved and I was able to concentrate for the full 70 minutes."

With alarm bells ringing in the full-back line, which was being held together by Darren Fay's excellence, Meath drew Westmeath again in the All-Ireland quarter-finals. Faced with the immensely influential Ger Heavin, O'Reilly put his head down and curbed the Westmeath captain's role.

Before the semi-final, the speculation was that O'Reilly wouldn't stay with Kerry's in-form corner forward John Crowley, who had a big height advantage. In the end and in keeping with the rest of the match, O'Reilly had fought his corner and won.

"Sean would have you primed," says O'Reilly about manager Seβn Boylan, "to expect the unexpected. It was likely that I wasn't going to be marking Johnny so I came prepared for whoever came into my corner so that took off a little bit of the pressure. A lot of these big confrontations that are supposed to happen, don't happen. Usually what we do at the start of any game is take up our positions and if we have to change after a couple of minutes we will change. That's the way we did it."

Pre-match indicators defined the semi-final as a clash between two full-forward pairings: Graham Geraghty and Ollie Murphy for Meath and Kerry corner forwards Michael Francis Russell and Crowley, who entered the match in pole position for the Footballer of the Year accolade.

Meath's domination of proceedings was so complete the Kerryman saw little decent ball but anything that came his way was accompanied by a tussle.

"He's a very strong guy," according to O'Reilly, "well able to give you the nudge and knock you off your stride. I think that's the big thing with the ball over the top. He can catch a high ball over you as well and is very fast off the mark, full of running. I think on the day he just didn't get any supply in and there was no space on the inside forward line. That made our jobs easier.

"He's a bigger man than me and could knock you off the ball. I suppose there was no point in me going in trying to hit him with a shoulder because he'd just brush it off. I saw in the Dublin games where Dublin players tried to bodycheck him but it just didn't work.

It was a case of keeping a body width away from him and getting the hand in, not fouling and not committing yourself."

Size was going to be a major consideration but O'Reilly ended the match without being exposed - despite conceding three inches - and even at one stage beat his man in the air.

"You just try to break it down so that the ball's back down on the ground and you get on with it. The main thing is stopping him from catching it. I suppose after a few years of experience you find ways of stopping a lad from catching it. When you've someone like Darren (Fay, full back) beside you, you usually hear him coming from behind and stay out of his way - or get flattened."