Mick O’Dowd offers no excuses

Mick O’Dowd entered the press room with the glazed expression of a soldier who has just witnessed terrible things at war.

Naturally enough, the Meath manager struggled to make any sense of how his side scaled the peaks and, ultimately, the troughs of a Leinster championship tie for the ages.

“We came up really focused on reaching a Leinster final,” said O’Dowd. “And in the first-half we played some really good football but we probably weren’t clinical enough.