Meath boys run out of air!

Meath minor hurlers made a tame exit from the Leinster Minor Shield at Clane on Tuesday night of last week where they were totally out-classed. Meath looked like a tired team and were second to the sliotar most of the time and there were some suggestions that Oxegen at Punchestown may have hindered Meath's preparations. However, officials were remaining tight-lipped on that particular matter and most of talk in the stand concerned Real Madrid at Carton House. With Kildare in their customary all-white strip, perhaps the Meath players were overawed by the occasion, although they managed all their scores from play? Despite a poor opening 30 minutes, Meath were only adrift by six points at half-time, 1-4 to 1-10. They wasted too many chances and tallied eight wides with some deplorable finishing Kildare finished the game as a contest within seven minutes of the resumption when they added another goal and by the end of the third-quarter were 10 points ahead, 2-13 to 1-6. Meath manager Vinny Guy was very disappointed by the team's performance and accepted that Kildare were by far the better team. "They beat us all over the pitch, but I don't think our lads can ever be as bad again, it was desperate," Guy told the Meath Chronicle as he left the pitch at the Kildare venue. "Anything that could go wrong did go wrong, Brendan Murray was unavailable due to illness and when you lose a talented centre-back it is a huge disadvantage. "We then had to move players out of positions to compensate for his absence and that can be very disruptive on a team. "That was bad enough, but then we had 14 wides and even if we had converted half of those chances it would have made a big difference on the scoreboard. "I have to give some credit to Kildare also, they were very good and have some very impressive players, we had nothing to counteract them "We wanted to win this competition and I'm very disappointed with that performance, the only positive, I suppose, was that we never gave up and the players kept battling. "We will have to go back to basics now and start to get ready for the first round of the All-Ireland B against Mayo on Saturday, 1st August, hopefully we will be in better shape for that one," he concluded. William Harnan claimed Meath's first-half goal and poinst from Mark O'Sullivan, Damien Magee, Ray Hatton and Keith Keoghan completed a paltry tally before the break. The second-half performance was even worse and 1-2 of that arrived in the last three minutes when Kildare were only going through the motions. Kildare - C Gallagher; J Dunne, R Kelly, D O'Donoghue; M Carter, J Byrne (0-1, M Purcell; L O'Reilly (0-1), B Aherne; C Kenny (0-1), M Fitzgerald (0-9, three frees, one '65'), K Connor; E Doyle (2-2), M Delaney (1-1), C Hehir (0-1). Meath - Shane O'Brien (Navan O'Mahonys); Stephen Morris (Blackhall Gaels), Sean Carroll (Kiltale), Shane Moran (Dunboyne); Conor Foley (Killyon), Shane Brennan (Kilmessan) 0-1, Thomas Raleigh (Killyon); Ray Hatton (Boardsmill) 0-2, Eoin Marsh (Kilmessan); Keith Keoghan (Killyon) 0-1, Mark O'Sullivan (Kiltale) 1-1, Damien Magee (Trim) 0-1; Gary Kelly (Kildalkey), William Harnan (Kiltale) 1-1, Eoin Lynch (Longwood). Subs - Kevin Keena (Kilmessan) for Marsh 24 mins; Darren Tormay (Gaeil Cholmcille) for Foley half-time; Scott Bagnall (Kilmessan) for Magee, Anthony Healy (Longwood) for Harnan, both 36m; Coran Byrne (Longwood) 0-1 for Hatton 50m. Referee - Pat Murphy (Carlow).