Meath advance, but fail to impress the manager
MEATH manager Andy McEntee is a hard man to please. Not even the fastest goal ever recorded in Championship football – young forward Jack O’Connor needed just nine seconds to hit the net in Navan – and another from Jack Flynn in the second half that will surely end up on a highlights reel at the end of 2022, could stir his enthusiasm. Sure, there was an acknowledgement that if you’d offered him a 10-point win yesterday morning and a place in Leinster’s last four, he’d have taken it. But it was all a little underwhelming from Meath, a side with designs on a provincial title, and the best spin McEntee could put on their performance was that it will act as a nice stick to the beat his players with in training over the next fortnight. ‘I thought we were only okay, to be perfectly honest,’ said McEntee. ‘We didn’t inject the pace into the game that I’d like us to be doing, but we can’t complain. If you’d offered that outcome to me before the game, I’d have taken it. I just didn’t think we were going at them. I didn’t think we were asking enough questions of them.
It’s certainly a lot easier to go into the dressing-room now and say, “Listen lads, we’ve a load of things to work on.”’ And yet it appeared after that early O’Connor goal, and even more so after James McEntee netted in the sixth minute, that another goalfest could be on the cards to mirror Meath’s 7-14 drubbing of the Garden County in 2020. For O’Connor’s goal, Bryan Menton won the throw-in and fed Ronan Jones, who played the ball ahead to the speedy Curraha forward. Menton had a hand in the second goal too, though it was a miscued point attempt from him that allowed James McEntee to sneak in and
fist to the net. There were further goals in the second half from substitutes Mathew Costello and Flynn, but overall Meath lacked the sort of energy and craft that will be required to take down more substantial opposition. ‘I think that’s a fair statement, it wouldn’t be good enough,’ nodded the manager. The promise of players like goalkeeper Harry Hogan – admittedly beaten in a 5050 aerial battle with Oisin McGraynor for Wicklow’s only goal in second-half stoppage time – O’Connor and Flynn, allied to the enduring excellence of Donal Keogan, Conor McGill and Menton, means they can’t be written off. After those two early goals, the best Meath could do was an even split of the next 10 points in the first half, sending them in 2-5 to 0-7 up at the break. In the 10 minutes after half-time, Meath outscored the visitors by 1-3 to 0-1, which effectively ended the contest, Costello playing a clever one-two with Jason Scully for his 45th-minute goal. There were brief flashes of excellence, like a Jordan Morris point from the left wing off the outside of his left boot, and that subsequent Flynn goal, but Meath will look to improve going forward. As for Wicklow, joint-manager Alan Costello said: ‘We felt we could have caused an upset against Meath but it wasn’t to be.’ MEATH: H Hogan; R Clarke, C McGill, E Harkin (J Muldoon, 64); J McEntee, D Keogan, C Hickey (R Ryan, HT); B Menton, R Jones (J Flynn, 60); J Scully (S Walsh, 62), T O’Reilly, J O’Connor; J Morris, C O’Sullivan, J Wallace (M Costello, 38). SCORERS: J O’Connor 1-3 (0-2f), B Menton 0-4, J McEntee, M Costello, J Flynn 1-0, J Morris (0-2f), T O’Reilly 0-2. WICKLOW: M Jackson; M Stone, P O’Keane, T Moran; N Devereaux (A Murphy, 64), A Maher, Z Cullen; P O’Toole (M Traynor, 72), JP Hurley (O McGraynor, 47); R Stokes (O Cullen, 53), D Healy, D Fitzgerald; M Kenny, K Quinn, E Darcy (J Kirwan, 68). SCORERS: E Darcy (0-4f), M Jackson (0-3f, 0-1 45) 0-4, O McGraynor 1-0, P O’Toole 0-2, K Quinn, R Stokes 0-1. REFEREE: P Faloon (Down).