The Royals lost to Cork last Saturday afternoon, extinguishing any faint hope they had of forcing their way into the Allianz NFL Division 2 promotion picture.
They round off their campaign on Saturday night away to Donegal, but manager Colm O’Rourke is already looking further down the line.
“It is (a great test) and at the same time we have to balance that with trying to maybe give a rest to a few people who have played Sigerson and had a really tough campaign,” O’Rourke said.
“They have been training since before Christmas so a few of them could do with a bit of a break so there is not much break with the Longford game coming two weeks after Donegal, so we’ll try to maybe give some fellas a little chance that haven’t got a game and at the same time we have to have one eye on Longford, or maybe both eyes, on Longford.”
“We do intend having a training camp in May ourselves. We are working on that but the problem with a lot of the fellas at this stage is maybe a bit of mental tiredness, maybe more than physical.
“They could do with a week off, maybe we should be telling them to go off on a holiday themselves.
“But a lot of them are students and are working towards exams in May as well so there is plenty of pressure on a lot of these fellas.”
Cork had just returned from a training camp in Portugal a few days before they powered home in Navan, with manager John Cleary hailing its value to the squad.
“We thought it was very useful actually. We train Wednesday and Friday nights and you come in there and it’s a case of you don’t get an awful lot of time to work with these guys,” Cleary explained.
“We said at the start of the year that if we could get three or four days together and a bit of a block that it would be good for spirit and it would be also good to work on our game plan because, as I said, you get your hour and a half there on a Tuesday and Thursday night and the games then are week to week and you have to see who is available, who is injured, who can train, who can’t train.
“And we felt that if we got away and if we had everyone training on the pitch…we did two sessions a day and they had the S&C and they had the recovery on site.
“Definitely I think it helped us in that regard. Look, we’ll see in the future but while we were there I think the lads really saw the benefit of it, training for three or four days, twice a day, recovery, pool and do video sessions and did a bit on psychology and that so to answer your question, yeah, we did find it beneficial.”
Cork are close to a clean bill of health with Rory Maguire on track to be available for the Munster championship clash with Limerick though Cathail O’Mahony is out until after the provincial series.
Meath lost Darragh Campion, Ruairi Kinsella and Jack O’Connor to injury during the defeat to Cork though none are thought to be serious.
The Royals were also without captain Ronan Jones for the game though Ross and Ronan Ryan, Jason Scully and Jordan Morris are all edging towards a return.
However, Conor Gray, one of the finds of last season’s successful Tailteann Cup campaign, is set for an extended spell on the sidelines after illness.
