DUBLIN JUST TOO STRONG FOR MEATH

Old rivalry becoming a part of ‘folklore’ MARK GALLAGHER

The half-time score even had an air of unreality about it

HO-HUM. There wasn’t much to see here. Dublin sauntered into a sixth straight Leinster final without breaking much of a sweat.

Their margin of 10 points was a small victory for Meath, who had been beaten by 16 points when these two last met in the Championship.

But it was only 10 points because Dublin wanted it to be. The outcome was never in doubt during a disappointing second half when Meath, having trailed the All-Ireland champions by only three points at the interval, only managed three points.

And despite all of this, Meath did plenty of things right yesterday evening. Mick O’Dowd’s side were the first to keep a clean sheet against Jim Gavin’s Dublin in the Leinster Championship (and only the third overall in Championship football after Donegal in 2014 and Kerry in last year’s All-Ireland final)

But there was no point in keeping the goals out at one end if they couldn’t raise a green flag themselves. Meath had an early goalscoring opportunity when Harry Rooney, who put in a hard-working shift around the midfield battleground, dropped a high ball on top of the Dublin full-back line.

Dalton McDonagh caught the ball above Davy Byrne but the defender recovered to block McDonagh’s shot. And with that went Meath’s opportunity to unsettle Dublin. They had another chance immediately after half-time when Mickey Newman caught another high ball, but his shot went wide.

If there weren’t going to find the net, Meath were never going to win. But the manner in which they faded from the game during the second half did little for the surreal atmosphere among the 42,255 in Croke Park.

And perhaps it was the strange mood around Jones’ Road that contributed to Dublin’s early sloppiness, they hit five wides in the opening 10 minutes, and offered the slightest glimmer of hope that the big blue juggernaut might be gasping for air.

Within the opening 90 seconds, Stephen Cluxton’s first kick-out, directly after Graham Reilly kicked the opening score of the game, went awry and almost resulted in another Meath score. Dublin cleared their lines, though, but it betrayed a little unease in Dublin’s early play.

Indeed, when Reilly kicked his second point of the game in the ninth minute, Meath were 0-3 to 01 ahead. But that’s as good as it got for the Royals. The All-Ireland champions gradually began to exert themselves. When Brian Fenton, influential all evening around the middle, nailed a lovely point in the 15th minute, after neat interplay with Kevin McManamon, it put Dublin ahead for the first time in the game. They never looked back.

Mickey Newman’s nerveless freetaking kept Meath in the game but Dublin stretched ahead in a twominute scoring spree that saw contributions from Bernard Brogan and Dean Rock, that left three points ahead after 21 minutes, 0-7 to 0-4 — and they would maintain that gap for the remainder of the first-half.

The Royals retreated further back and Newman often cut an isolated figure up in the Meath full-forward line. But his kicking into the Hill was a joy, nailing three frees in the first-half.

Aside from that, Diarmuid Connolly was catching the eye, scoring a magical point in the 25th minute when he sidestepped Rooney before floating the ball like an arrow into the Canal End with the outside of his left boot.

The elusive Cillian O’Sullivan set up Eamonn Wallace for an immedi-memories ate response, but a combination of Rock’s free-taking and a couple of splendid scores from Paul Flynn ensured that Dublin had the three-point gap at the break, 0-11 to 0-8.

The GAA made big noise about the 25th anniversary of the 1991 saga, Sean Boylan and Paddy Cullen were brought to Croke Park during the week to re-visit their while yesterday’s match programme even claimed to be a souvenir 25th anniversary edition. But the intensity of this game never touched on the rivalry of yore. Johnny Cooper, one of Dublin’s most impressive young guns, claims the rivalry is folklore and despite Mickey Burke and Graham Reilly doing their best to create a couple of flashpoints before halftime, that’s what it seemed yesterday.

The half-time score of 0-11 to 0-8 even had an air of unreality about it and the second-half simply petered out to its inevitable outcome. Despite the efforts of Padraic Harnan, who defended like a Trojan, Rooney and Donnacha Tobin, most of the Meath players appeared satisfied to keep the scoreline respectable. Their objective appeared to keep the margin to single digits, but Connolly’s classy intervention towards the end, when he scored two wondrous points, ensured they weren’t even able to do that.

By the end, even the countless seagulls circling overhead seemed bored by the fare, down below. Maybe Johnny Cooper is right, maybe the Dublin-Meath rivalry is folklore. It’s hard to remember any recent battles — and this one will be forgotten about very quickly.