Meath 4-22

Longford 0-12

FOUR-STAR MEATH clinically dispatched Longford in Páirc Tailteann and booked their place in this year’s Leinster senior football championship semi-finals.

The Royals grabbed the game by the scruff of the neck with an unanswered 1-5 leading into half time, Jordan Morris’s goal giving them a 10-point cushion at 2-10 to 0-6.

Andy McEntee’s side never looked back with Cathal Hickey and James Conlon also raising green flags in the second half for a lob-sided 22-point margin at the final whistle.

Longford were facing an uphill battle within 90 seconds of the start when Shane McEntee swerved around Mickey Quinn and fired the ball past Paddy Collum in the Longford goal.

But Padraic Davis’s side responded well in the opening quarter and trailed by just two, 1-3 to 0-4, when Robbie Smyth pointed a free as the sides went in for the first water break.

The tide tilted decisively in Meath’s favour in that second quarter, which they won by 1-7 to 0-2, Morris’s goal deep into additional time capping a sustained period of dominance.

Meath pounced on Collum’s short kick-out to force the turnover deep into Longford territory, and Bryan McMahon picked out Morris at the back post where he palmed into the net unopposed.

Meath’s third came in the 48th minute, Hickey finishing off a lovely counter-attacking move by shrugging off the challenge of two Longford defenders to make it 3-13 to 0-8.

And the outcome was already long put to bed when Mickey Newman’s effort spun across the face of goal in the 69th minute, Conlon sliding in to scramble Meath’s fourth over the line.

– Updated 17.51: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Meath would now play Westmeath in the Leinster SFC semi-finals; the draw for the semi-finals has yet to be made at the time of writing.

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