Uncertainty rules as Meath and Dublin champions deadlocked

Leinster Club FC Quarter-finals/ St Vincent's 0-11 Seneschalstown 1-8: It was hard to work out who should feel positively or negatively about the deadlocked outcome at the end of yesterday's AIB Leinster club football quarter-final.

Vincent's, the Dublin champions, had survived by a last-minute point, but their Meath counterparts had been fortunate to come through having lost corner back Colin Clarke to a second yellow card in the second half.

Seneschalstown had also benefited from a puzzling decision in relation to a first-half shot from Tomás Quinn that was signalled wide but looked to have swung inside the posts, but they probably weren't giving much thought to a 16th-minute deliverance when an unexpected victory had beckoned so late in the day.

The Leinster Council will share in the mixed feelings. This match will have to be rerun, apparently in Navan next weekend, but the liquidity boost from the replay revenue will have to be set against unravelling the controversy of why extra time wasn't played, as it was in the other drawn quarter-final, between Leinster champions Moorefield and Dromard of Longford in Newbridge.

Referee Eugene Murtagh was approached by Seneschalstown at full time and asked if there was an additional period to be played. Murtagh said there was not, but according to an official source afterwards the referee was unsure on the matter.

The match programme gave no hint, as it generally does by listing potential replay dates, and neither team seemed sure. Maybe the referee's notebook was simply full after a game in which he showed 12 cards, 11 yellow and a red. It would be trite to criticise him, saying it wasn't that sort of game; it wasn't, but neither did he imagine the fouls.

Seneschalstown's manager, Damien Sheridan, admitted later he probably preferred a replay: "We have a good record in replays (a reference to the county final replay win over Navan O'Mahony's)."

The St Vincent's manager, Mickey Whelan, had good reasons for holding the opposite view: "There weren't any instructions but we would have preferred to have played overtime. I'm away next week and there's nothing I can do about it so we definitely would have played overtime."

Asked about captain Tomás Quinn, who returned from holiday to play in the match and is due to go away again, Whelan said, "That's another problem. The replay is next Sunday in Navan. The only positive thing is that we're not out of the championship."

It was disappointing for the Dublin champions to have scored a paltry two points in the second half having looked the better team for the first half-hour.

Critically though, they squandered a litany of scoring chances.

At their best they got a good service from Michael O'Shea and Hugh Coughlan and posed plenty of problems for their opponents on the flanks, all four outside forwards getting on the board - Tiernan Diamond confining himself to a playmaking role on the 40 and at full forward Diarmuid Connolly rarely menacing.

For all the possession the Vincent's attack frequently lost possession when pressing forward. Tellingly, wing back Pat Kelly ended up top scorer with three points from play, including the 59th-minute equaliser.

Defensively the Dubliners were well served by Paul Conlon, Hugh Gill and Eoin Brady, who did a good job of countering Seneschalstown's main gambit: the big ball into Joe Sheridan.

The imposing full forward caused some problems, kicking two points from play and dispatching the penalty when Bryan Clarke was brought down in the square in the 23rd minute, but he didn't become the expected fulcrum of the attack and played most of the second half in a withdrawn role.

By half-time the margin was just an unrepresentative two, 0-9 to 1-4 for the Dublin club, and it looked likely that for all their facility at living off scraps - five scores and no wides in the first half with Brian Sheridan clipping two good points from play - Seneschalstown would not have enough chances to push for home after the break.

Despite having seized the lead with Sheridan's penalty, the Meath champions didn't ignite but rather watched Vincent's go through their most productive spell of the afternoon and reel off five points from play in six minutes.

Vincent's went flat after the break and the match sank into a morass of crowded central corridors. The dismissal of Clarke on 45 minutes made the teams even more cautious.

Quinn put Vincent's three ahead shortly into the second half but they didn't score again until the equaliser 27 minutes later. In between with Damien Sheridan driving them on from centrefield Seneschalstown picked a way back into the game with four unanswered points.

ST VINCENT'S: M Savage; P Conlon, E Brady, H Gill; T Doyle, G Brennan, P Kelly (0-3); M O'Shea, H Coughlan; N Billings (0-1), T Diamond, K Golden (0-1); B Maloney (0-2), D Connolly (0-1), T Quinn (0-3, one free). Subs: P Gilroy for Billings (42 mins), R Trainor for Connolly (59 mins).

SENESCHALSTOWN: D Lyons; S Sheridan, A Collins, C Clarke; M Carey, C Quinn, C Gleeson; R Ruddy (0-1), D Sheridan; C Macken, A McCann, J Cowley; B Clarke, J Sheridan (1-2, goal from penalty), B Sheridan (0-5, three frees). Subs: D Byrne for Cowley (48 mins), G Conlon for B Clarke (49 mins), G Sheridan for McCann (54 mins), J Byrne for Gleeson (56 mins).

Referee: Eugene Murtagh(Longford).