\u200bElectric Ireland Leinster MFC, Round 2<\/p>\n
Group 1<\/p>\n
Kildare 1-16 Meath 1-11<\/p>\n
Louth 0-19 Laois 0-11<\/p>\n
Group 2<\/p>\n
Offaly 6-23 Longford 1-12<\/p>\n
Group 3<\/p>\n
Wicklow 3-15 Carlow 1-19<\/p>\n
Wexford 2-15 Kilkenny 1-4<\/p>\n
By Paul Keane<\/p>\n
Connell Kelly was last year’s Electric Ireland MFC top scorer and the Louth phenom is shaping up as if he wants to do something similar in 2026.<\/p>\n
The son of former Louth senior forward and manager Colin gave another exhibition of scoring with eight points as Louth made it back-to-back Group 1 wins.<\/p>\n
After seeing off Meath narrowly in Round 1, Louth knew another win this evening, against Laois, would leave them just 60 minutes from automatic qualification for a semi-final.<\/p>\n
The sides were level at 0-8 apiece at half time but two Kelly points immediately after the restart gave the hosts the impetus to leave Laois in their slipstream.<\/p>\n
Kelly added three more points throughout the second half while Pauric Maguire also weighed in with a crucial two-pointer to help the Eamon McEneaney managed side turn the screw.<\/p>\n
The Leinster championship is composed of a dozen teams, split into three groups of four, and the winners of Group 1 and Group 2 qualify directly for semi-finals.<\/p>\n
Kildare also have a perfect record in Group 1 after beating Meath in Skryne and they will face Louth in Round 3, a tie that is now a shoot-out for a last-four position.<\/p>\n
The Lilies got on top early on against Meath with Greg Kelly’s ninth minute two-pointer leaving them 0-4 to 0-1 up at that stage.<\/p>\n
Milo Stafford, nephew of Meath great Brian, levelled it up at 0-4 apiece with a two-pointer for Meath but Kildare then moved ahead and remained in pole position throughout.<\/p>\n
Logan Tennyson’s 27th minute goal helped Kildare to lead by 1-10 to 0-7 at half time, the corner forward pulling off a textbook back-door cut from the left before finishing to the net.<\/p>\n
Conn Brennan’s goal for Meath cut the deficit to three after 42 minutes but late two-pointers from Kildare duo Kelly and Jack Reilly sealed their win.<\/p>\n
Offaly hammered Longford in the other Group 2 game, leaving them tied on two points in the table with Dublin, behind Westmeath who are on four points after two rounds. Westmeath will play Offaly in Round 3.<\/p>\n
First-half Offaly goals from Oliver Goulding and Jamie Harvey propelled them into a 2-14 to 0-6 half-time lead.<\/p>\n
Paddy Burns – who’d earlier scored points from play, from a free, from a 45 and converted a two-pointer – hit Offaly’s third goal. Darragh Stewart, Sean Monaghan and Shane Lawless raised further green flags in the last 20 minutes.<\/p>\n
The four Group 3 teams – Kilkenny, Wicklow, Wexford and Carlow – are battling for two preliminary quarter-final spots. The third placed team in Group 1, Meath or Laois, along with the third placed team in Group 2, will claim the other preliminary quarter-final places.<\/p>\n
Wicklow are top of Group 3 after backing up their Round 1 win over Wexford by defeating neighbours Carlow.<\/p>\n
The Garden County led 3-10 to 0-4 at half time thanks in part to goals from Joe Keeshan, Odhran Cullen and Harry Butler.<\/p>\n
But a brilliant second-half display from Carlow left just two in at the final whistle and Carlow shaved the post with a two-point attempt in the last action.<\/p>\n
Wexford also turned on the style in the second half, bouncing back from their loss to Wicklow by beating Kilkenny who they were on level terms with at half time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u200bElectric Ireland Leinster MFC, Round 2 Group 1 Kildare 1-16 Meath 1-11 Louth 0-19 Laois 0-11 Group 2…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387056,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-387055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}