Colm Collins is hopeful Clare can banish the Meath “Indian sign” and win a Super 8 spot.
Although it’s the first ever Championship meeting of the counties, they’ve crossed paths regularly in the League in recent years and it’s been one-way traffic.
Clare have spent three seasons in Division Two after winning promotion in 2016 but have lost to Meath each year by an average of more than 10 points a game.
The closest Clare have come was in Ennis in March when Meath scored a 1-12 to 1-7 win to take a significant step towards promotion to Division One, which they secured against Fermanagh a week later.
“They’ve had a bit of an Indian sign over us,” said Clare boss Collins. “They have beaten us three times out of three so hopefully there’s a turn in the road.”
Still, there shouldn’t be any major hang-ups on Clare’s part given that they’ve beaten teams of Meath’s calibre and better over the course of Collins’s hugely progressive reign.
With Malachy O’Rourke’s recent departure from Monaghan, Collins is now the third-longest serving manager in county football behind Mickey Harte and Jim Gavin.
In 2016 he guided Clare to the All-Ireland quarter-finals – a Championship campaign which has only been bettered once since 1917, that being the shock Munster title win in 1992.
For the Banner to reach that stage twice in four seasons – with the prospect of a minimum of three more games if they win tomorrow – would be quite a feat.
Collins continued: “Obviously this is where you want to be. Any team that’s playing football at inter-county level wants to be in the Super 8s, that’s it, so it’s massive.
“But it’s not something that will take from our game. I think we’re going to go out and give it our best shot and that’s it.”
Although Meath posted just 0-4 in their Leinster final pummelling from Dublin, Collins believes they’ll have moved on from that come tomorrow.
“I don’t think it’s going to be a major factor.
“It was a terribly tough one when you had a very quick turnaround if you had to play the following week, but they’ve had a couple of weeks to sort this out and I’m quite sure a man of the quality of Andy McEntee will have this well dealt with.”
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