O'Rourke hopeful Meath can recover after 'reality check'

Colm O'Rourke admitted his Meath side were handed a "reality check" in their 11-point loss to Derry in the pair's Division 2 encounter in Owenbeg.

Meath entered this afternoon's televised top-of-the-table clash buoyed by wins over Cork and Clare, O'Rourke's team racking up seven goals in the opening two rounds.

However, they fell to earth with a thud in a lopsided loss against Derry, Rory Gallagher's side offering them a bracing reminder of the current pecking order.

The Ulster champions had a goal on the board inside 50 seconds, Ethan Doherty spinning away from a tackle and firing a shot underneath Harry Hogan's body.

In the final play of the opening half, Niall Toner coolly slotted home at the end of a characteristically patient move to leave the score at 2-08 to 0-03 at the break, the contest effectively settled.

"We're trying to build a team and it's going to be a rocky road," O'Rourke told RTÉ Sport's Damien O'Meara afterwards.

"It'd be much easier to be commenting on the game tonight than to be actively participating in it!

"We know where we are, we got a reality check. We won our first two games, we knew it wasn't all going to be smooth. So, we have to go away and re-evaluate it.

"We were very poor tonight, we were very disappointed with our performance. But we'll be better the next day."

O'Rourke was confident his team would react well to the loss, though he acknowledged that they'd need to review the performance.

"We thought we'd be competitive with Derry, we thought we'd make a right match of it. But the reality is the game was over before half-time. We're disappointed with that.

"The players themselves are disappointed. The reaction of players in defeat tells you a lot about the kind of men involved. And I'd be very