Careless Crokes fail to capitalise

If Kilmacud are to emulate the exploits of their 1995 forebears, they will have done it the hard way. Inexplicably tight winners over Dunboyne in the quarterfinal, the Dublin champions dominated great swathes of yesterday's AIB Leinster club football final only to be taken to a replay.

They may complain - but to be fair to them, they didn't really - that a Ray Cosgrove shot in the first half fell foul of the meanest defence in the modern game: the umpires of referee Brian White.

After the controversies of two weeks ago which triggered an appeal to the Leinster Council, the umpires waved wide the Kilmacud forward's angled attempt in the 17th minute. From the press box perspective, the shot looked good.

Nonetheless Kilmacud had heaps of chances to put the match away but instead chalked up twice as many wides as the durable Carlow champions. Almost perennial contenders for the Leinster title this decade, Eire Og proved hard to shake. Defending tightly and scoring with an economy which hasn't always marked their displays, they slipped through late in the match to tie up the result.

This was a relatively entertaining final before a good crowd of 8,000. Conditions were heavy and sticky and as a result the quality of football wasn't always impressive. Both sets of defenders acquitted themselves well as the low scoring indicates, but aside from that virtue, the match was a bit too pockmarked with haphazard distribution and other errors to register that highly on the scale of quality.

Eire Og got off to a flying start when Jody Morrissey, who went on to have a busy match, flicked Muckle Keating's free to the net in the third minute. Other early excitement saw Kilmacud's Peter Ward getting booked for a foul on Skippy Callinan.

Kilmacud weren't panicked and by the 12th minute Mick O'Keeffe had dismantled the lead with two frees sandwiching a fine score from play. Both O'Keeffe and his colleague Ray Cosgrove were prominent in Kilmacud's attack, but the new Dublin corner forwards weren't at their most accurate.

O'Keeffe hit four wides to complement the same number of points, but he outshone Cosgrove who had three wides and also dropped four attempts into the arms of a grateful John Kearns in the Eire Og goal.

The pattern of the match didn't vary much. Neither side got a grip on centrefield, albeit that Morrissey and opposite number Maurice Leahy covered a lot of ground. Kilmacud were quicker to the breaking ball in general, although Willie Quinlan put in one of his customarily energetic displays.

Despite the obvious danger posed by O'Keeffe and Cosgrove, Kilmacud weren't that successful in supplying their corners with the ball in quantities commensurate with the possession the team was winning. The tendency to hold the ball too long or take wrong options spoiled a number of promising attacks.

In addition to these failings, the Dublin champions marked very loosely around the middle and on several occasions key Eire Og personnel were taking uncontested passes as attacks built up. That they came to little was more of a tribute to Kilmacud's defence and the full back line in particular.

Eire Og's defence was also in mean humour. Brendan Hayden tussled gamely with O'Keeffe and won a few balls, although he looked in trouble when tracking his man. Centre back Paul Doyle played intelligently in the face of Mick Dillon's shrewd muscularity.

Dillon had one of Kilmacud's two good goal chances in the first half, but saw the ball crash off the bar before Cosgrove's "wide" was signalled. Eleven minutes later, Peter Ward - scorer of three delightful points over the afternoon - slipped in behind the defence but was swallowed by the cover.

Thanks to Ward's opposite number Brian Carbery, selected locally as man of the match, Eire Og went in at half-time on level terms. His two nice finishes - the first to a spectacular sweeping move involving Doyle and Morrissey - helped set up the 0-6 to 1-3 interval scoreline.

You would have got long odds on the Carlow team surviving after six minutes of the second half. An opening flurry yielded nothing more than a solitary point from Garvan Ware and three shots dropped short. Within seconds Maurice Leahy responded with an equaliser and the sense that Eire Og had blown out spread.

By the 43rd minute, Kilmacud had hit the front with two points from Ward and - although they had in fact scored their last - then proceeded to dominate the match. Crucially, nothing came of this spell. Just as against Fr Manning Gaels in the semi-final, Eire Og rolled with the punches and watched as their opponents wasted several good chances.

Hughie Brennan came on for the last quarter and his beefy presence was credited by manager Pat Critchley with eventually steadying the ship. Critchley's Kilmacud counterpart, Robbie Kelleher, was less convinced.

Whatever the truth, Eire Og did recover and in the last 10 minutes Carbery and Keating, from a free, drew the match level.

There was one last throw of the dice for the Dublin club. In injury-time, a long-range free was awarded about 50 metres out. It's never a good sign when a team decides to hold a symposium on who should take a vital kick and, sure enough, Jonathan McGee's effort sailed wide and the Leinster final had been drawn for the third time this decade.

Kilmacud Crokes: M Pender; C O'Dwyer, C Deegan, C Cleary (capt.); J O'Callaghan, J McGee, R Leahy; J Costello, M Leahy (0-1); P Ward (0-3), M Dillon, C Redmond; R Cosgrove, P Burke (0-1), M O'Keeffe (0-4, two frees).

Eire Og: J Kearns; B Hayden, A Corcoran, J Dooley; J Murphy (capt.), P Doyle, A Callinan; G Ware (0-1), J Morrissey (1-0); B Carbery (0-3), P Kingston, W Quinlan; P McCarthy, L Turley (0-1), A Keating (0-1, a free). Subs: J Hayden for McCarthy (37 mins); H Brennan for Kingston (46 mins).

Referee: B White (Wexford).