Meath under pressure to make amends

SFC QUALIFIER: Limerick V Meath:A LITTLE over a year ago these sides played out one of the more unusual games of the summer. Meath travelled to Limerick hoping to recover from the shock defeat to Wexford in the Leinster quarter-final, but got a right hammering – they were 17 points behind with 12 minutes to go, and in the end went out 4-12 to 4-3.

Limerick’s Ian Ryan scored 3-7 that day, the highest individual score in the 2008 championship.

A year on it promises to be a lot closer. Speaking of close, Limerick came within one point of producing the upset of this summer when going down to Cork 2-6 to 0-11 in the Munster final, a game Cork were told they only had to show up to win.

Ryan was in excellent form again that day, but what caught Cork off guard was Limerick’s ferocious work-rate and competitiveness, which had their opposition in trouble all over the field. It’s still hard to believe Cork went an entire 35 minutes of that game without scoring.

The question here, inevitably, is whether Limerick can reproduce that form again, but there is no reason to believe they can’t.

Manager Mickey Ned O’Sullivan remains one of the cooler and more astute men in the business, and his team clearly have the will to play for him.

It’s no surprise that he has named the same starting team that lined out in the Munster final defeat to Cork, but it’s a small surprise to see dual stars Mark O’Riordan and Stephen Lucey line out again just six days after helping the Limerick hurlers edge past Dublin in the All-Ireland quarter-final in Thurles.

Meath manager Eamonn O’Brien also has kept with the team that defeated Roscommon last Saturday, 2-12 to 0-11. With Kevin Reilly still sidelined due to a back injury, the versatile Anthony Moyles continues at full back.

Again, it has to be closer than last year, and Meath might just have enough to come out the right side of the result this time and sneak on to face Mayo next weekend.

MEATH:P O'Rourke; C O'Connor, A Moyles, E Harrington; S Kenny, C McGuinness, C King; N Crawford, B Meade; P Byrne, J Sheridan, S Bray; D Bray, B Farrell, C Ward.

LIMERICK:S Kiely; J McCarthy, S Gallagher, M O'Riordan; S Lavin, S Lucey, P Ranahan; J O'Donovan, J Galvin; P Browne, C Joyce-Power, S Buckley; G Collins, S Kelly, I Ryan.

Referee: Pádraig Hughes (Armagh).

Games on Setanta

FANS IN Britain can watch live football and hurling All-Ireland championship action in 45,000 commercial premises from this weekend thanks to an agreement between the GAA and Setanta Sports.

The coverage covers the three All-Ireland football quarter-finals, on Sunday and Monday. The live broadcasts will be available on Sky Channel 167. From August 9th the live games will move to a permanent slot on Sky Channel 437. These games will be available only in commercial premises.