Wexford 0-10 Meath 1-5: When it's renovation time and still dark before six you have to be careful about what counts as a surprise result. Wexford hosted an in-form Meath yesterday, and while still adjusting to football in the fast lane, they soon had form flying out the window, and ended up deserving winners.
So this probably does count as a surprise result.
What surprised as much as anything, though, was the performance of Meath. Supposedly riding high after last week's confidence booster against Galway, yesterday they were unexpectedly stagnant. They had Wexford breathing hard in the closing moments but unlike seven days ago they weren't getting anywhere.
Not that Wexford will come away dreaming of Sundays in September either. Most of the time they held the lead and for almost all the second half were comfortably dominant, yet manager Pat Roe was the first to admit that perfection is still some way off.
Yet for now they're definitely swimming rather than sinking in their debut season in division one. "Of course I'm pleased that we won," said Roe, "but not quite at how hard we made it on ourselves. I thought we were the only team in it for the second half, and yet we ended up in a dogfight.
"Still I feel the better team won, without a doubt."
Clearly his team had done enough to leave the home contingent in the small 2,814 crowd well satisfied. Scoring was sporadic but of good quality, epitomised by the sweet, sharp-witted touches of Matty Forde, and also the brief but glorious contribution of John Hudson. Three points in as many minutes some 20 minutes into the second half were the most telling, and just about made up for the leaner times.
"We did lack that killer instinct," added Roe. "We had Meath on the rack and I'd say we missed 1-5 in clear-cut chances. We still need to put teams away when we're winning, but that comes with experience."
For Seán Boylan the two-point defeat didn't quite remove his jovial appearance. Several players were rotated from last week and captain Paddy Reynolds hadn't travelled because of a family bereavement. His forwards just never clicked, and while Joe Sheridan again made his presence felt in scoring 1-2, others like Damien Byrne and substitute Brian Farrell didn't reach recent heights.
Being reduced to 14-men for the last 20 minutes didn't help Meath's cause either, but the redcard shown to Shane McKeigue was more a reflection of an overly active referee than of the game being in any way dirty.
Wexford also lost defender Niall Murphy minutes from the end on a second yellow card for an adjudged tackling offence.
"Well you know I felt myself that we're not as far along as some people were saying we were," said Boylan. "It's still a learning graph for a lot of those lads, and they're not going to be on top of their game every day they go out.
"It was a good win for Wexford, but we knew coming down here we'd be made work for everything. They were well prepared and well up for it. But it is hard this time of year to combine the training with all the games. If you're winning it's fine, but we just didn't cope today. But that's no excuse."
Like last week, Meath let their opponents take an early advantage - though not quite as extensive as that achieved by Galway. With Forde in particularly fine form Wexford pulled 0-3 clear after 13 minutes, before Sheridan started a Meath response that first tied the scores, and then sent the visitors a point clear. Just before the turnaround Leigh O'Brien converted a Wexford free and 0-4 each was fair and square.
Within 10 minutes of the restart Forde had pushed Wexford two points clear, and then came the three in quick succession - two from Hudson, and one from substitute Darren Browne. Leading 0-9 to 0-4, Wexford were cruising, only for Sheridan to calmly punch a long ball from Darren Fay to the net.
But while the tension mounted Meath ultimately had precious little more to offer.
WEXFORD: J Cooper; C Morris, P Wallace, N Murphy; G Sunderland, D Breen, L O'Brien (0-2, both frees); W Carley, D Fogarty; G O'Grady, J Hudson (0-2), K Kennedy; S Doran, P Colfer, M Forde (0-5, three frees). Subs: D Browne (0-1) for Fogarty (29 mins), A Morrissey for Hudson (66 mins), D Foran for Doran (71 mins).
MEATH: D Gallagher; T O'Connor, A Moyles, M O'Reilly; S Kenny, D Fay, H Traynor; N Crawford, M Ward; N Kelly, S McKeigue, D Byrne (0-1); B Dillon, R Magee (0-2, one free), J Sheridan (1-2, one 45, one free). Subs: D Clarke for Kenny (15 mins), B Farrell for Dillon, N Nestor for Kelly (both half-time), J Cullinane for Ward (44 mins), D Regan for Byrne (56 mins).
Referee: F Barrett (Kildare)
