\u200bElectric Ireland Leinster minor football championship semi-finals<\/p>\n
Meath 2-14 Dublin 2-8<\/p>\n
Kildare 1-11 Louth 0-10<\/p>\n
By Paul Keane<\/p>\n
A dream double of Leinster underage title triumphs could be on the cards for Kildare.<\/p>\n
Just six days after the county’s U-20s grabbed the Dalata Hotel Group provincial title, their minors powered through to the final at their grade.<\/p>\n
Jack Doran fired the crucial goal in Kildare’s semi-final win over Louth, propelling them through to a final date with Meath.<\/p>\n
The young Lilywhites were never behind against 2025 provincial finalists Louth at the Hunterstown Rovers club outside Ardee.<\/p>\n
But they also struggled to shake off a talented young Louth team led again in attack by Connell Kelly.<\/p>\n
The son of former Louth forward and manager Colin Kelly nailed five points for the hosts who were level with just eight minutes of normal time remaining.<\/p>\n
But Doran’s well worked 52nd minute goal put Kilkenny into a lead they held onto and embellished with late points from Logan Tennyson and Fiachra Martin.<\/p>\n
Kildare lost to Louth in Hawkfield in Group 1 last month but seized the initiative early on this time with the first three points of the game.<\/p>\n
Eoghan Lyons, P\u00e1id\u00ed Ryan and Jack Reilly were all the mark though a trademark two-point free from Kelly levelled it up for Louth at 0-4 apiece.<\/p>\n
Reilly and Donnacha Reidy traded points to leave the teams locked on 0-5 apiece at the interval.<\/p>\n
Kildare won the third quarter to move three points clear before being reeled in again by Louth scores from Cillian Duff and Brian O’Neill.<\/p>\n
But Louth, crucially, could never get their noses in front and when Doran netted it gave the visitors a vital cushion.<\/p>\n
Trevor Giles’ Meath will attempt to deny Kildare a first title since 2019 and to secure what would be a first title for themselves since 2021, the year they went on to win the All-Ireland.<\/p>\n
Meath lost twice in Group 1, including a five-point home defeat to Kildare, but have bounced back impressively since then with wins over Laois, Wicklow, Offaly and now Dublin.<\/p>\n
In those four games, Meath have scored a whopping 19 goals with this evening’s two majors tucked away by Milo Stafford and Cormac McKenna.<\/p>\n
Stafford, nephew of county great Brian, was the team’s talisman again in attack and finished with 1-4 while McKenna struck 1-1. Captain Harry McGuirk and Conn Brennan split six points evenly between each other.<\/p>\n
Dublin had home advantage at Parnell Park and led 1-3 to 0-2 thanks in part to Patrick Cahill’s 16th minute palmed goal.<\/p>\n
But the Stafford and McKenna goals arrived in quick succession and helped Meath to lead by 2-4 to 1-3 at half time.<\/p>\n
Dublin restarted with points from Mo Salami, Max Morrison and James McCaghy and led 2-7 to 2-6 when Eoghan Madden scored their second goal.<\/p>\n
But a terrific two-pointer from McGuirk ignited wind-assisted Meath who powered on from there with sub Leo Kavanagh among their late scorers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u200bElectric Ireland Leinster minor football championship semi-finals Meath 2-14 Dublin 2-8 Kildare 1-11 Louth 0-10 By Paul Keane…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-445623","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\/445623","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=445623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}