Meath 2-19 Wicklow 3-12

A mere footnote in a long summer of football but worth stalling over nonetheless. Meath, so snappy in their distribution at this first Leinster championship match at Páirc Tailteann in 20 years, found the means to wriggle free.

This open style of football yielded five goals and there should have been more.

It took a stream of Andrew Tormey frees to reach the 2-19 needed to see off a Wicklow side 11 points inferior if you believed the bookmaker handicap beforehand.

That prediction was way off and indicative of the lack of respect shown to a panel that has been summarily dismissed since losing quality footballers like Leighton Glynn.

It had their manager, the former Dublin footballer Johnny Magee, spitting fire.

“We came up here firmly believing we would beat Meath even though everybody wrote us off,” said Magee. “It was pretty awful stuff in relation to how we were put down from all angles. There are 30 odd guys in there who have bought into something we wanted. I thought it was disgraceful how we were put down coming up here.

“Those guys are amateur fellas. I’d be honest with you, I was hurting for them, to have to deal with that negativity from within and outside. They gave a huge performance, did all we asked them to do, they bought into a system, stuck to a gameplan, stuck to their strength and conditioning programme. We knew that those guys are well capable of playing inter-county football.”

Meath manager Mick O’Dowd, having lost six players to injury recently, was forced to name four debutant’s in defence alone. It showed.

John McGrath really should gave plundered a goal with his point blank range shot in the opening seconds. Patrick O’Rourke couldn’t but save.

Rustled into action Meath gathered 1-3 over the next ten minutes. The goal was from a Tormey penalty after Paul Cunningham dragged down Stephen Bray. It made no sense how Derry referee Barry Cassidy didn’t reach for his black card. He did eventually. In fact, he showed all the colours in his notebook as Wicklow finished with 13 men.

No yellow cards for Meath though. This was a rough, uncompromising game of football but far from dirty. Certainly entertaining.

Paul Cronin, who later walked for an unexplained second yellow (no one remembered the first), got the goal to mark Wicklow’s initial revival.

There was far too much space in front of Meath’s defence in contrast to Magee funnelling back his wing forwards to clog the route to the Wicklow goalmouth. That kept them in this contest.

When Thomas Kelly spurned Wicklow’s third sight at goal Meath stretched clear thanks to smart points by James McEntee, Brian McMahon and Graham Reilly.

The majority of this 8,417 sun-kissed crowd seemed to relax when an exasperated Niall Gaffey was black carded for dragging Reilly to ground. Just like the earlier incident which went unsanctioned besides the awarding of a penalty.

Anyway, Meath drove on to the interval, leading 1-11 to 1-6. Reilly’s goal and a point early in the second half had them in total command.

But that didn’t last long as Conor McGraynor replaced the dismissed Gaffney. His impact was significant, first burying a 45th minute penalty to the bottom left corner. A few Darren Hayden scores also mattered but it was the big DCU student who did the real damage.

O’Rourke felt he had no option but to rugby tackle McGraynor as he was about to score a second goal on 53 minutes. The Meath goalkeeper was rightly black carded, replaced by Conor McHugh, who dived the wrong way as McGraynor slid the penalty wide. Cassidy insisted on a retake which McGraynor netted to give us a three point game entering the last 15 minutes.

Next Thomas Kelly hoisted a lovely score and when Wicklow captain Dean Healy drew a free after grabbing McHugh’s kick out we felt a massive momentum shift coming. Alas, McGrath put it wide.

O’Dowd, sensing the perilous situation, sent on some experienced, albeit unfit, heads like Mickey Burke and Kevin Reilly. Tormey frees kept going over, a 45 too. That proved to be enough.

It may be said that Wicklow self destructed when Cronin and then Healy were shown late red cards but in reality they just fell off the pace against superior opponents.

“It was getting to a ridiculous level, the way teams were being written off in the championship,” said O’Dowd after. “Probably that’s what was happening as well with Wicklow. But everyone is preparing well now. They have a good management team.They weren’t far off.”

They must go to Armagh now for the qualifier while Meath face their neighbours to the west.

MEATH: 1 Patrick O'Rourke; 2 James McEntee (0-1), 7 Brian Power, 3 Donncha Tobin; 5 Nicky Judge, 6 Donal Keogan (capt), 4 David Dalton; 8 Harry Rooney, 9 Adam Flanagan; 10 Graham Reilly (1-4), 11 Padraic Haran, 12 Andrew Tormey (1-9, 1-8 frees); 13 Joey Wallace (0-1), 14 Stephen Bray (0-1), 15 Brian McMahon (0-3). Substitutions: 17 Mickey Burke for N Judge (half-time), 25 Bryan Menton for A Flanagan (46 mins), 18 Eamon Wallace for J Wallace (50 mins), 16 Conor McHugh for P O'Rourke (53 mins, black), 26 Kevin Reilly for D Dalton (57 mins)19 Sean Tobin for B Power (64 mins).

WICKLOW: 1 Robert Lambert; 2 Ciaran Hyland, 3 Paul Cunningham, 4 Aaron Murphy; 5 Dean Healy (capt), 6 Paul McLoughlin (0-1), 7 Mark Kenny; 8 Anthony McLoughlin, 9 Daniel Woods (0-1); 10 Darren Hayden (0-2), 11 Stephen Kelly (0-1), 12 Niall Gaffney; 13 Paul Cronin (1-0), 14 Thomas Kelly (0-3), 15 John McGrath (0-3, all frees). Substitutions: 23 Conor McGraynor (2-1, 2-0 pens) for N Gaffney (27 mins, black), 17 Ross O'Brien for P Cunnngham (42 mins), 24 James Stafford for D Woods (44 mins), 21 Paddy Dalton for A McLoughlin (47 mins), 25 Brendan McCrea for J McGrath (66 mins).

Referee: B Cassidy (Derry).