Kerry ease past Westmeath

Kerry 1-12 Westmeath 0-6

Kerry put in a sluggish display at Tralee this afternoon but did enough to warrant a NFL Division 1 win over struggling Westmeath.

The midlanders remain rooted to the bottom of the table after falling away in the second half of this poor quality tie.

With the wind at their backs, Tomas O Flatharta's side built a 0-5 to 0-4 half-time lead with key forward Denis Glennon on target four times.

Defender Doran Harte was the visitors' only other scorer in a largely incident-free opening half.

Both Glennon and Harte grabbed early points as Kerry fell 0-3 to 0-1 behind.

But pointed efforts from Kieran O'Leary and Seamus Scanlon, who impressed in centre-field, soon levelled up the game.

In attack, only Glennon and Kerry target man Kieran Donaghy stood out and the returning Tadhg Kennelly, making his first competitive start for the Kingdom, was kept quiet.

Play was crapped between the two 45-metre lines and short passing was very much the order of the day, even if was the poorer option at times.

Paul O'Connor kicked Kerry ahead with a free, but as the half came to a close, wind-backed Westmeath hit the front again thanks to Glennon frees after 31 and 34 minutes.

Westmeath worked themselves a goal chance, five minutes after the restart. Conor Lynam dinked a cross in and despite Glennon managing to get his fist to the ball, Tommy Griffin was on hand to scramble it away from the goal-line.

Roused into action, Kerry put together some of their best forward play to move 0-6 to 0-5 ahead.

Paul O'Connor and Donaghy collected points and then substitute Darren O'Sullivan crashed a powerful shot off the crossbar after being set up by Donaghy.

With little else to offer, the 'long ball' route into Donaghy was used more often by Kerry as the game wore on.

And why not when the Tralee giant is in this sort of form. Donaghy was a very influential figure as Jack O'Connor's men galloped ahead on the scoreboard.

Donaghy played his part in teeing up further points for O'Sullivan and Tomas O Se and Westmeath were suddenly struggling to keep up.

They had to raid the substitutes bench when their two starting midfielders had to come off - Niall Kilcoyne suffered an injury and David Duffy was yellow carded.

Into the final quarter, both sides missed penalty chances. The usually reliable Glennon sent his effort to the left and wide.

And then Westmeath net minder Gary Connaughton pulled off an excellent save, when Paul O'Connor tried his luck for Kerry.

But Connaughton could only watch on as Bryan Sheehan pointed the resulting '45' and Kerry then made the game safe when man-of-the-match Donaghy slipped home a very good goal after linking up with Paul O'Connor.