O’Dowd: Very pleasing performance

Mick O’Dowd preferred to dwell on the positives rather than the fact Meath’s 12-point lead was twice cut to four in the final 12 minutes of normal time.

Kildare fired over seven points in 15 minutes, the last four of them coming in just two minutes, as Meath, so superb in the third quarter, blew hard.

O’Dowd accepted it was a concern but stressed the more significant point was the clinical manner in which his team became a dot on the horizon to Kildare.