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Royals return to spotlight
 Meath
2-12
Roscommon 0-10
Allianz National Football League Division 2 Final
Meath footballers have stared into the abyss many times in recent seasons
but their impressive defeat of Roscommon in the Division Two final hinted
that the glory days could return to the Royals.
Full-forward Brian Farrell was the star man for Meath on Sunday as the
principal creative force for Colm Coyle’s side. As well as being
their main source of scores his final tally of 2-8 gave adequate notice
to the full-backs of Ireland that Farrell could be one of the stars of
the summer.
Roscommon never got into the final trailing throughout. They laboured
their way to every score, were outsmarted in midfield and lacked the creativity
in defence to ever have Meath on the back foot.
John Maughan must have been cautiously optimistic at the interval. Playing
against a stiff wind in Breffni Park his side trailed by 0-8 to 0-4. Any
hope the Roscommon crowd had however was wiped away within three minutes
of the restart as Farrell hit the first of his goals a defensive blunder
in the Roscommon full-back line leaving him with a simple task to fire
to the net.
The Connacht side tend to be patient in their build-up but their half-forward
line got little change from the excellent Meath trio of Caoimhin King,
Anthony Moyles and Sean Kenny. It was only by adopting the more direct
approach, firing the ball to Ger Heneghan, that Roscommon made any attacking
progress.
By the time Farrell scored his second soft goal with 10 minutes remaining
Roscommon’s chances of claiming a National League title had disappeared
while the Meath supporters were already training their eyes towards the
Championship. The Royals will face Kildare in three weeks time as they
bid to reclaim their position as one of football’s heavyweights.
The introduction of Graham Geraghty as a late replacement received the
biggest cheer of the day from Meath fans.
Roscommon are a team who could pose a serious threat in the qualifiers
but they lack a little quality in one or two areas, a fact acknowledged
by manager John Maughan afterwards.
“We gave away soft goals and at this level you can’t do that.
There is a lot of work to be done but we will be back in training next
week and do what we can,” he said.
Meath captain Anthony Moyles ack-nowledged that his team’s form
had been indifferent in the League campaign saying: “I’m glad
that we did the business today.
“It’s a nice lift for the players and hopefully we can build
on this and restore Meath to the top level of football.”
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