MEATH ace Jordan Morris went from hell in March to heaven in June.
The Kingscourt clubman, 24, thought his year was over when he suffered horror injuries in their NFL Division 2 loss to Louth four months ago.
Morris had a fractured tibia and grade two tears in his ACL and PCL knee ligaments.
But after digesting the news, he decided to fight for his season – and returned to the pitch in their Leinster final defeat to the Wee County less than two months later.
Losing that game was a bitter pill to swallow, but Morris’ risk paid off. He has starred in Meath’s run to their first All-Ireland semi-final since 2009 against Donegal, and never looked back.
He said: “Probably the overriding feeling straight after that Louth game was that was my year done. It probably took maybe a week or a week and a half to get a full grasp of what happened.
“But the doctors and physios I was dealing with were very good, they laid out a pathway straightaway.
“I think I was given maybe eight weeks to get back on the pitch and I think I managed to get back in six, pushing and driving it on.
So I just was trying to do everything I could to get back on the panel and matchday squad.
“I would have been rehabbing three times a day, injections and stuff like that to get back on the pitch, and then the S&C work you have to do.
“It’s mad within even a week of not playing how much you can lose a bit of match fitness. I think that was probably a thought in my mind and on the physios’, to get back to that level of gameplay and stuff like that.
“It was so hard to go back to it. The S&C coaches, Philip Campbell and David Drake, are probably one of the best I’ve ever worked with.
“They got me back in a position to get out on the pitch in the Leinster final, so I can only thank them as well.
“I’m taking a bit of a risk as it is, but with the year we were having, I couldn’t miss out on it.”
Meath have had the summer of their dreams. Beating Dublin in championship football for the first time since 2010 lit the flames, but missing out on provincial glory to Louth was a harsh reality check.
But Robbie Brennan’s men dusted themselves down and reset – and topped their All-Ireland series group to storm into the last eight.
They took Kerry’s scalp in their final group game to book a quarter-final spot.
Galway were their next victims when Morris fired 1-6 in a stunning 2-16 to 2-15 win, which saw him bag the PwC GAA/GPA Player of the Month award for June.
Donegal stand in their way of a first final since 2001, and Morris says losing the Leinster final was the kick in the backside they needed.
He said: “It probably took us a few days to get the show back on the road. I think it was maybe Thursday’s session, everyone sat down and had a bit of a meeting.
“We were just like, ‘What do we want to get out of the year now?’ So we set our plans in place and we said, ‘Look, we’re going to tear into it,’ so that’s what we did.
“We were straight back on the horse. I think it was the Cork game two weeks after the Leinster final. We had no time to really dwell on the Louth game. We took a bit of analysis out of it and moved on. It was just sharp like that.
“Just chatting to the boys during the week, it’s grown us as a group massively. Louth probably taught us a bit of a lesson in the last five minutes of keeping the ball.
“It’s something we probably learned from them going into games like this in Croke Park, trying to turn momentum and different things like that so it definitely stood us in good stead against Galway.”
Morris thought scoring a goal into Hill 16 was never going to happen back in March, but he lapped it up after hitting the net against Galway.
Meath’s journey has given their supporters something to cheer about, 26 years on from their last All-Ireland title – and their hitman has no intention of stopping now.
GOAL RUSH
He said: “Scoring a goal into Hill 16 is unbelievable. No feeling will ever, or words will describe it.
“It’s something I’ve seen plenty of teams doing in the past. It’s something you probably only dream about really, so to do it was great.
“I remember being on the Hill in 2010 when Meath won Leinster against Louth. That’s probably my earliest memory of Croke Park, I’d say.
“So to get out on the field and cheer on your heroes, you think back to those days. Now for kids looking up at the likes of the boys on our team, I was once one of those kids.
“I think we’ve always had the footballers, I think the new rules probably blended into our style of play a little bit more. You have to put in the hard work as well.
“That’s what we’re doing at the minute. We’re not reading into hype or any of that. We have the lads around us to help us out in that aspect.
“We know we’re going to be up against it at the weekend, there’s no doubt about that. Look, we know the ability we have, we just have to keep our heads down.”
