Electric Ireland Leinster MFC preliminary quarter-finals<\/p>\n
Westmeath 1-14 Carlow 1-12<\/p>\n
Meath 6-23 Wicklow 0-5<\/p>\n
By Paul Keane<\/p>\n
Aaron Connaire and Dean Kelly led by example as Westmeath turned a sticky situation into a terrific win in Tubberclair, securing their Electric Ireland Leinster MFC quarter-final place.<\/p>\n
And Mick Dillon’s side will be joined by neighbours Meath in the quarter-finals after Trevor Giles’ young Royals comfortably took care of Wicklow in Aughrim.<\/p>\n
Westmeath’s reward for coming from behind and grabbing the win is a clash with Kildare next week while Meath will hope to take the momentum from their big win and carry it into a date with Offaly.<\/p>\n
Westmeath had to show real grit to see off Carlow this evening as they trailed by seven points at half time.<\/p>\n
Visiting Carlow were 1-9 to 0-5 up at that stage thanks in part to Eoghan Treacy’s 15th minute goal and four points from Alex Doyle.<\/p>\n
There was also a perfectly executed two-pointer from Cormac Murphy off his left boot which opened the scoring for Carlow and laid the platform for them.<\/p>\n
Westmeath dug deep after the break and Connaire’s goal just four minutes after the restart was a big score, hauling them right back into it.<\/p>\n
Connaire then added a two-pointer in the 43rd minute to reduce the deficit to just two points, 1-10 to 1-8.<\/p>\n
The sides were level at 1-11 apiece with 10 minutes to go and a two-pointer from Dean Kelly, followed by a Connaire point, nudged Westmeath two points clear at the death.<\/p>\n
There was drama in the final moments when Carlow’s Adam Joyce hit the post with a goal opportunity.<\/p>\n
Meath were too good for Wicklow in Aughrim and were inspired by rising star Milo Stafford who helped himself to a hat-trick of goals and 3-3 in total.<\/p>\n
Cormac McKenna struck the opening goal for a Meath side that finished third in Group 1.<\/p>\n
After narrow losses to Louth and Kildare, Meath closed out their group campaign with a 6-22 to 0-7 win over Laois and brought that confidence with them to Wicklow where they raised another six green flags.<\/p>\n
Cormac McKenna scored the first of Meath’s goals, followed by a Stafford penalty conversion and a third from Conn Brennan. Stafford’s second goal came late in the half as Meath soared 4-7 to 0-3 clear at half time.<\/p>\n
Stafford completed his hat-trick after the break and substitute Dara Loughran also found the net while captain Harry McGuirk impressed with 0-8 and was one of 11 Meath scorers overall.<\/p>\n
Sean Corrigan, Harry Butler and Joe Keeshan scored points for Wicklow who had previously topped Group 3 with three wins from three.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Electric Ireland Leinster MFC preliminary quarter-finals Westmeath 1-14 Carlow 1-12 Meath 6-23 Wicklow 0-5 By Paul Keane Aaron…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-422442","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\/422442","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=422442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}