Meath and Roscommon forced to settle for draw after thrilling affair
All-Ireland SFC: Roscommon 2-15 (2-5-5) Meath 0-21 (0-5-11)
Cork are facing a do-or-die shootout with Davy Burke's Roscommon after the Connacht side posted their first group stage point in the All-Ireland series with a draw against Meath at Dr. Hyde Park
Meath had won the previous four championship meetings between the teams, but Enda Smith helped the Rossies get back on level terms in the fifth instalment by kicking three second-half two-pointers after his side trailed by five points at the break.
Both sides kicked five two-pointers apiece, and Smith missed a second-half penalty in a game of fluctuating fortunes.
Meath, with Ruairí Kinsella, James Conlon and Mathew Costello prominent, always managed to keep the scoreboard ticking over.
Kinsella's 64th minute point left the sides level, but both sides spurned chances to win it coming down the stretch.
Kinsella raised his side's first orange flag with the outside of his right boot in the fifth minute before Eoghan Frayne opened up a three-point gap after the visitors capitalised on a Roscommon turnover as Meath enjoyed a healthy wind advantage in the opening 35 minutes.
But Roscommon wiped out that deficit when Senan Lambe set up Diarmuid Murtagh for a well-taken goal after seven minutes.
Dylan Ruane nudged his side in front after Roscommon worked the ball upfield from goalkeeper Conor Carroll but the excellent James Conlon — who scored 0-5 from play during a productive opening 35 minutes — got off the mark to bring the sides level.
In the 15th minute, Roscommon struck for a second goal when Shane Cunnane found Ben O'Carroll raiding in behind the Meath rearguard, and the St. Brigid's forward produced an assured finish past Billy Hogan.
Meath began to win the midfield battle, and Roscommon's cause wasn't helped by the loss of Niall Higgins to injury.
Conlon added a couple of rapid-fire points before Daire Cregg replied for the Rossies after Lambe grabbed primary possession in the middle of the park.
But Meath began to flex their muscles, mostly off Roscommon turnovers and their dominance around the middle.
Conlon and Conor Duke sent over a couple of two-pointers in jig time, while Jordan Morris also found the range to open up a 0-12 to 2-3 gap.
Menton arced over the Royals' fourth two-pointer of the half, and Conlon soon added to his tally to stretch his side's buffer to six points.
Cregg grabbed a much-needed score for Roscommon before Morris and Ciaráin Murtagh — a free on the hooter — left it 0-16 to 2-5 in favour of Meath at the change of ends.
The second half was laden with drama as Smith put a missed 41st-minute penalty behind him to spearhead his side's recovery.
Billy Hogan's 46th minute two-point free from 45 metres, following earlier points from Seán Coffey and Frayne, left Meath 0-20 to 2-9 ahead but Robbie Brennan's side would only trouble the scoreboard once more.
Diarmuid Murtagh kicked a couple of two-pointers, while Smith added another to leave the Rossies ahead by the bare minimum with nine minutes remaining.
Kinsella restored parity, although both sides will rue missed chances in the final five minutes.
Mathew Costello fisted against the crossbar after a surging run, with substitute Conor Gray unable to force the rebound home, while Meath full-back Seán Rafferty produced a brilliant tackle at the death to deny Ben O'Carroll when he looked certain to score the winner.
Scorers for Roscommon: D Murtagh (1-4, 2 tp), E Smith (0-6, 3 tp), B O'Carroll (1-0), D Cregg (0-2), D Ruane (0-1), S Lambe (0-1), C Murtagh (0-1, 1f) each.
Meath: J Conlon (0-6, 1 tp), R Kinsella (0-3, 1 tp), E Frayne (0-2), C Duke (0-2, 1 tp), B Menton (0-2, 1 tp), J Morris (0-2), B Hogan (0-2, 1 tpf), M Costello (0-1, 1f), S Coffey (0-1).
Roscommon: C Carroll; N Higgins, C Neary, D Murray; R Daly, B Stack, S Lambe; E Nolan, S Cunnane; D Ruane, C Murtagh, E Smith, D Murtagh, D Cregg, B O'Carroll.
Subs: P Frost for Higgins (14), D Smith for C Murtagh (49), C McKeon for Ruane (49), K Doyle for Nolan (57), R Fallon for Lambe (64).
Meath: B Hogan; S Lavin, S Rafferty, B O'Halloran; D Keogan, S Coffey, C Caulfield; A O'Neill, B Menton; C Duke, R Kinsella, M Costello; J Morris, J Conlon, E Frayne.
Subs: C Hickey for Duke (55), K Curtis for Frayne (59), C Gray for Menton (64), J McEntee for Lavin (65), E Harkin for O'Neill (67).
Referee: P Faloon (Down).
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Independent
an hour ago
- Irish Independent
With ‘insane' record of 16 wins and no defeats, what makes John Kiely's Limerick so difficult to beat in a final?
Pat Ryan remembers it being said regularly that Limerick were 'the Mayo of hurling' given their struggles to get over the line on All-Ireland final day.
Irish Times
2 hours ago
- Irish Times
Leinster SHC final: Unflappable Kilkenny can contain the Galway bounce-back
Leinster GAA SHC final Kilkenny v Galway, Croke Park, Sunday 4pm Are Galway becoming a bit like the three-card trick merchants? Every year is the one that's going to be different. Honest. It has been some resurrection for Micheál Donoghue's team to proceed from the vacuous display in Nowlan Park seven weeks ago to being quietly reinstated as contenders for this weekend. Kilkenny in Leinster finals have been a constant source of grief for the westerners since they moved into the province. One win in eight is the running total, allowing that in 2018 the first match was a draw and they eventually won after a replay. Nearly all of those were comprehensive defeats or spectacular self-infliction, like 2020 and 2023. There is, however, some logic to the Galway revisions. They caned a Dublin team that Kilkenny had laboured to put away and even if the Dubs were unfathomably poor two weeks ago, their opponents' vigilant pressing and tactical nous were influential in forcing that. READ MORE Goals are again an issue, in that of the six teams in the Leinster round robin, only Antrim managed fewer green flags than Galway but no side has hit more points. Of course, when Donoghue guided the county to the 2017 All-Ireland, they notably scored no goals in four of their five championship matches. This, predictably, isn't a concern for their opponents, who with 15 have top-scored in championship goals to date. The team hasn't been tweaked much, let alone overhauled, but Derek Lyng continues to get the most out of them. Injuries have stalked selections and Eoin Cody is missing again with hamstring trouble but TJ Reid perseveres and has bagged 4-22 in the last three matches, 3-2 from play. There was the now traditional reverse against Wexford on the last day but that was a dead rubber from Kilkenny's perspective. For that match, Lyng ran an experiment of Adrian Mullen at centre back. It may have been whimsy but presumably there was some level of curiosity as to how the unusual placing of an All Star front eight player would fare and how sustainable the attack might be in his absence. The challenge for Galway is how dependable their opponents are. Kilkenny are on a six-in-a-row in Leinster despite having hardly impacted on the All-Ireland championship during that time. They will turn up and play to a guaranteed level. [ Galway's Cathal Mannion only too aware of Kilkenny's extra-time threat Opens in new window ] They will be more attentive in marking Galway's players and not leaving the gaps that Dublin did nor yielding the same stream of turnovers. David Burke had an excellent match in Parnell Park and his distribution will be a key factor for them. Donoghue has a good record in Leinster finals, having won two titles in three years during his first tenure. They will press hard and in the repurposed Conor Whelan and the prolific Cathal Mannion they have All Star quality forwards in form. Kilkenny's consistency and application, however, look more persuasive. Verdict : Kilkenny Kilkenny : E. Murphy; M Butler, H Lawlor, T Walsh; M Carey, R Reid, P Deegan; C Kenny, J Molloy; J Donnelly, A Mullen, B Ryan; S Donnelly, TJ Reid, M Keoghan. Subs : A Tallis, P Moylan, D Blanchfield, S Murphy, K Doyle, Z Bay Hammond, F Mackessy, H Shine, L Hogan, L Connellan, M Murphy. Galway : E Murphy; P Mannion, Daithí Burke, F Burke; C Fahy, G Lee, TJ Brennan; S Linnane, David Burke; J Fleming, C Mannion, T Monaghan; C Whelan, B Concannon, K Cooney. Subs : D Walsh, D Morrissey, J Grealish, J Ryan, D Loftus, R Glennon, C Cooney, T Killeen, A Burns, C Molloy, J Flynn.
Irish Examiner
3 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Cork players don't look to blame others anymore
'Donal O'Mahony, he's a good friend of mine, he's in the coaching ticket there. We have huge regard for each other.' – John Kiely, May 30. In the skull and crossbone, Donal O'Mahony and John Kiely were kindred spirits. Thickest of thieves. One of the few things they didn't share in UCC was a Fitzgibbon Cup. Kiely finished up a year before O'Mahony was part of the 1996 winning team. Full of affirmations and convictions, it's easy to see how they gravitated to each other and continue to remain pals despite their obvious differences. The respect Kiely speaks of is indisputable. O'Mahony considers Limerick 'a generational team' but Pat Ryan's Cork beat them twice in the space of two months last year. Since then, there has been the 16-point payback but the Cork selector approaches Rd 2 in this Munster final brimming with belief. 'I've been involved a couple of years now and your natural inclination is you want to win every game, and when you don't, you get really disappointed. But like Pat's language is very good this year. It's a marathon, it's not a sprint. You just need to stay in there, and then when the time to make a move comes, you make it. 'So for us, making a move is from now on. We're in the Munster final, we're going to the All-Ireland series, so like this is happening. While we lost the game against Limerick and drew a game against Clare the first day, we're making finals whether it's by a circuitous route or a straight line route.' To draw a line under what happened on May 18, there had to be a bloodletting. A round of genuine mea culpas. Management and players owned up. 'If the lads are waiting for us to tell them to do things, I think we're in difficulty,' says O'Mahony of the fall-out from the game. 'There's a real sense that they let the group down, ourselves, they let the backroom team down and, yeah, we let the supporters down. 'It's not just the players, it's the management as well. We're in charge of setting up, we're in charge of the tactics, so we're all in it together, and that's a real positive for us, that the players hold their own meetings, and take responsibility, and they don't look to blame the coach, or the selectors, or the physios, or the doctors. 'That's, I think, a shift in the last couple of years. Before, maybe it wasn't that way, whereas now they take ownership of the performances, and don't look for excuses, don't look to blame people.' O'Mahony has obviously heard the yarn that Cork took a dive last month but he dispels that theory completely. At the same time, there are priorities. 'We always define that the big players play when it's needed the most. Is it needed the most in a round-robin game in Munster or an All-Ireland semi-final? You kind of go towards the latter there. 'This narrative that we kind of took the foot off the pedal and trained really hard for last week is incorrect. Our job all the time is to go out and try to win games, and we didn't achieve that outcome, but it wasn't a fatal blow-up, we weren't knocked out of the championship, and it put us back into an environment that we've been dealing with well in the last two to three years when our backs are to the wall. 'I think that's becoming our defining character. When we need to deliver, we're getting better at it. We're not there yet, but we're definitely getting better at it.' Although it was at times a fraught performance, beating Waterford last Sunday week was a case of mission accomplished and reaching a third consecutive competition final. O'Mahony didn't need the outside world for validation. 'The same fellas patting you on the back the week after Waterford were the same fellas kicking your ass after Limerick, so you don't get carried away with it. Our focus is getting the best out of our fellas, because we do believe that if we get the best out of our fellas, as we proved last year, we're a match for anyone. 'Our philosophy is a general psychological set, you have to keep the outside out, the noise that we can't control, but we're very proud of the connection that we have with our supporters. 'That brings with it the responsibility that you have to deliver. Everybody's busy these days, people are paying good money to go and watch us, and in Limerick the last day, the traffic was chaotic. People are giving a lot of time, a lot of money to follow us, we need to give them something to follow.' The wrecking ball that Brian Hayes has become at the edge of the square is the type of forward Cork folk will gladly fork out to see. O'Mahony can't stress enough how vital it is to have players with different skillsets. 'We felt at times before we might have been one-dimensional, whereas we've developed an adaptability, and that's a concern we have when we're looking at who we add to the panel. If we keep adding the same player, we're probably easier to play against. 'On one end of the spectrum, you have William Buckley who is lightning fast and a brilliant fella on the ball, all the way up to Brian Hayes, who's 6ft 5, and plays a totally different style of hurling. 'We feel we can change the way we play in-game, which is really important. In my first iteration (with John Meyler), we had really good players but were probably the same type of players and replacing a player with the same type of player you were likely to get the same outcome.' To execute a different result now, Cork must be different. O'Mahony is emphatic that they can be. 'If you look at the modern game of hurling, we were 12 points up at half-time in Ennis, and Clare turned a 12-point lead around in 35 minutes of hurling, so why can't we turn a 16-point deficit around in 70 minutes of hurling? 'We know we're capable of getting goals, and we're averaging nearly 30 points, we were 31 against Waterford, and we have the arsenal to do it, so we're confident that that 16-point deficit isn't a barrier to us.'
