A blistering unanswered run of 2-7 catapulted Mayo to their first All-Ireland final in five years.<\/p>\n
Louth, who failed to score for 28 minutes in a period across the two halves, were shellshocked by goals either side of the half by Darragh Beirne and Conor Loftus.<\/p>\n
Their kick-out platform was eroded by a pillaging Mayo who often pinned Louth in their own half.<\/p>\n
Mayo leaped into a nine-point lead in the 46th minute. It could have been into double digits had either of the three goal chances that fell substitute Tommy Conroy\u2019s way gone in.<\/p>\n
Conroy\u2019s first spanked the crossbar and the other was kept out by Niall McDonnell as was Ryan O\u2019Donoghue\u2019s. Still, he had the consolation of kicking over an advanced mark.<\/p>\n
With Louth completely on the rack and not having scored since the 28th minute, the margin inevitably climbed with Loftus\u2019 goal after another driving Conroy run widened the opening.<\/p>\n
Ciar\u00e1n Downey ended Louth\u2019s famine in the 56th minute, but Mayo picked off four of the next five scores, Kobe McDonald bringing his second-half total to three points.<\/p>\n
The hooter blew, the Mayo sideline entered the field, the first strains of \u201cThe Green and Red of Mayo\u201d struck up on the PA system but O\u2019Donoghue still had a two-point free to kick. And he did it, to bring his tally to 1-11 and Mayo\u2019s final win to 17 points.<\/p>\n
The concern for Mayo going into the game was how they were going to deal with Louth\u2019s strength on kick-outs, especially the opposition.<\/p>\n
Dara McDonnell enjoyed himself at times and Mayo won just five of 14 restarts but the disjointed nature of the half suited them royally.<\/p>\n
It helped that Louth fluffed their lines at times and Craig Lennon had to go off with a serious knee injury in the 23rd minute but Mayo\u2019s advantage was clear before then.<\/p>\n
In the fifth minute, Darragh Beirne was slipped in by McDonald for a shot that McDonnell found easy to keep out, but he was beaten by O\u2019Donoghue\u2019s low effort seconds later. McDonald had subtly tapped the ball into his path.<\/p>\n
With back-to-back two-pointers, the first from Downey from play followed by a Sam Mulroy thumping free, Louth moved into a two-point lead by the 17th minute.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Donoghue responded with a brace to and after a Keenan point the Belmullet man boomed over Mayo\u2019s first two pointer of the game.<\/p>\n
From the kick-out, McDonald fisted over a score and then Beirne punished a Downey foul on David McBrien.<\/p>\n
Three points, two of them with one kick, by Conor Grimes brought Louth level in the 28th minute. They threatened a goal on the half-hour mark but Keenan hesitated and Ryan Burns\u2019 shot was poor.<\/p>\n
A Towey point smarted but their spoiled chance was particularly felt when Beirne hit Mayo\u2019s second goal in the 32nd minute. Sam Callinan reacted quickly to a deflected point effort by Beirne who looped around to provide the option for his team-mate.<\/p>\n
A Mulroy two-point free on the buzzer was sent wide and the difference remained four, 0-11 to 2-9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A blistering unanswered run of 2-7 catapulted Mayo to their first All-Ireland final in five years. Louth, who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-545342","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\/545342","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=545342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}