YOU DON’T HAVE to finger through a stack of calendars to find how long it is since the Cork and Meath footballers traded punches as genuine heavyweights; one explosive snapshot from time takes care of the carbon dating.

Colm O’Neill, Cork’s fair-haired full-forward, has a hold of the ball after a free is called against him. Mick Lyons, Meath’s granite full-back chiseled out of the Hill of Tara, wants it back to take it.

Tired of Lyons’ pawing for it, O’Neill delivered a reflex snapped punch to his face and the response of Summerhill’s finest is to simply rub his chin in an Oscar impersonation of John Wayne after catching a loose haymaker in the midst of a wild west saloon brawl.

It is the 1990 All-Ireland final, but Lyons’ stoic response might as well have made it 1890.

And, in a way, that is how long it feels too, and not just because we live in a time where players drop to the ground on the invite of a whiffed breeze.

They get it together again this Saturday in Navan, which is the cue to summon another bout of nostalgia from a time when both were either kings or kingmakers.

That it is a rivalry frozen in time is in keeping with the status of two counties who have had to endure – in Cork’s case, eternally – the price of sharing a frontline border with the game’s two great superpowers.

Every now and again they break free, but rarely do they do so together which made that half decade at the end of the 80s and at the start of the 90s as rare as it was special.

Those in both counties desperate for history to rhyme once more might grasp at the few straws blowing in the wind.

After all, Meath put Dublin to the sword earlier this month for the first time in 15 years while Cork were indisputably the better team against Kerry, but could not find a way to prosecute that truth where it mattered most.

But let’s not get carried away.

Back in 2010 when Meath put five goals past Dublin on the way to their last Leinster title, Cork won the Sam Maguire but instead of history rhyming, they were merely two ships who did not even get to pass each other in the night.

This time they are what they are; two teams at the bottom end of the Sam Maguire pack but this may be as close to a sudden death game of championship ball between them since Cork romped to a 10-point win in the 2007 All-Ireland semi-final.

With Kerry in the same group, they still have a wild card to play for survival when they get to meet a Roscommon side weighed down by a regressive line of form since the end of March.

In that sense, there is a definite second chance but this still feels like a far bigger game for Meath than Cork.

That win over an injury-weakened and dozy Dublin feels more like an aberration in the weekends that have passed, not least given how the latter responded in Galway last weekend.

More pointedly, that memory of Meath suffocating without the lifeline of possession in the final minutes of their defeat to Louth in the Leinster final jarred. Not so much fighting for the Leinster title as hoping that somehow it would fall their way, which is not a great look when you are about to head out in the All-Ireland series.

Above all, what makes it so hard to invest any confidence in Meath is an appalling record against high-end teams over the past decade and a half.

Prior to this month’s win over Dublin, you had to go back to 2014 for the last time they beat a Division 1 team in Kildare in the championship, and before that, it was Galway in 2011. Depressingly, both Galway and Kildare were relegated out of the top flight in those two seasons.

Okay, Cork may not boast a Division 1 postcode but they remain a team that can pack a punch when least expected, as both Mayo and, up until their visit to Páirc Uí Chaoimh, an undefeated Donegal found out over the past two championship summers.

Of course, Robbie Brennan does not deserve his team to be condemned by the repeated failures which have preceded them.

But there have been a couple of times this season when the stakes have been raised and his team have badly malfunctioned.

An impressive run of four straight wins catapulted them into the Division 2 promotion frame, but the manner of their nine-point trimming by Monaghan hit the brakes on that in a game where they floundered terribly around the middle.

Brennan has come up with a new-look midfield this season in Jack Flynn and the returned Bryan Menton, although it goes beyond that pair as the impressive auxiliary role played by Matthew Costello showed in that win over Dublin.

However, when the expectation levels and the stakes are raised, as with Monaghan back in March, the manner in which Meath could not get their hands on the ball on their own restarts in the final quarter against Louth raises more questions, literally, about their head for heights.

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And if there is one sector of the pitch in which Cork come equipped with the look of a serious team, it is around the middle where Cian O’Callaghan and Ian Maguire are more than just formidable.

What fascinates is how Brennan responds to that final quarter blowout against Louth and it may well mean that he may have to roll the dice by reaching into the U20s, where the likes of the impressive midfielder Michael McIvor and impactful full-forward Jamie Murphy might get a call up.

More than anything, it is a bigger game for Meath because they ended last season as a team that had run out of road and ideas under Colm O’Rourke, and they simply can’t afford to go back there.

The giddiness of beating Dublin was all well and good, but without a cup to show for it, the prospect of finishing rooted to the bottom of their group will make it harder to claim that they are rolling with the punches and getting better.

These days, they simply don’t have the chin to take those kinds of blows.