Tailteann Cup final a high-stakes encounter for Down

Close your eyes and squint a little and there is more than just a hint of footballing royalty off the Tailteann Cup final.

Meath and Down, two counties you expect to be in the lifelong members club of the games top table.

On the one hand, they want to advertise how good the competition has been and how valued it is for them. On the other hand, to have the usual Tailteann Cup cliches trotted out but this time about them would be tough to take.

You know the ones: great for teams to be competing with 'teams at their own level', for them to ‘get big days in Croke Park’ and giving the players from ‘lower tiers a chance to win something’.

In their psyches, that’s not Meath's or Down's place in the world. Yet here they are.

To be fair, right from the start of the competition both managers have been the ultimate pragmatists. Make no mistake, both Colm O’Rourke and Conor Laverty are proud men and winners, they are not meekly accepting their new reality. Instead, one senses they are taking this hard, humbling medicine with a steely belief that it will make their future return to the top all the sweeter.

So what of Sunday? On the face of it, it’s a game that whets the appetite. Two teams with serious football potential. And it is all about the potential. The age profile and the recent underage success of both counties point to teams more likely to play on the front foot, dreaming of what is possible, in contrast to more experienced teams, where the scars of battle tends to lead to more sensible, risk averse football.

Yet, the modern game has made us all a bit wary of expecting classics. The excitement that greeted the quarter-finals spoke of our eternal optimism when contrasted with the grim reality that we all endured.

Classic or not,