Aontroim v An Mhí

[shady character]

Have to agree Hardy. A good thorough report there from o'neill.

Just one correction: Darren Fay was marking Brady and not Paddy Cunningham.

[ONeill]

Fay definitely shadowed Cunningham in the second half. It also looked that way in the first but could be mistaken as was at the Andersonstown end.

Finucane is young. I'm not a journalist nor aspire to be one but apologise for putting his name in brackets.

[navanman]

Thanks for the great report O'Neill.

Having been despondent at Meath's showing against An Cabhán, interested to know was there any discernible pattern to their play, or was it Staunton-esque?

[ONeill]

Meath isolated Farrell and Ward on either wing and fed them with long balls, mostly from the boot of Kenny the half back. If Moyles and Reilly weren't fielding cleanly, Kenny was hoovering around in a Dooher role. Farrell and Ward must've won 80% of what was directed at them but how much of that was down to their markers you'll not know til they met stiffer opposition. Their first instinct was to shoot from long range and more often than not it was off-target. Only occasionally were they supported, usually by Byrne and later on Geraghty.

Antrim flooded the midfield area so Meath exploited the wings. I'd like to see how mobile Moyles and Reilly would be with a bit of room. Antrim played a vaguely shaped diamond formation around midfield with Bell at the defensive end, Quinn, Gallagher, McCann and as many others as they could fit in in between and Brady at the other. The amount of times they tried to attack in waves using short hand-passing between these players only to have one player on a different wavelength was chronic. It left Niall Ward and Doherty seriously exposed when the ball was turned over.

Very hard to judge Meath on this performance.