KEVIN CASSIDY: Meath fell into the trap

I DON’T think anyone will argue that we are now left with the two best teams in the country to contest the All-Ireland final later this month.

For me, from early doors, including during the league, Kerry and Donegal have been slightly ahead of the rest in terms of the football they play and the potential they possess. To now have both of them sitting in the final is exciting to think about.

If we are being honest, we all expected Donegal to comfortably make it through their semi-final with Meath, but the Kerry and Tyrone game looked harder to predict. In the end, it resulted in two easy wins for the finalists.

Looking back at Kerry’s win over Tyrone, the Red Hands would’ve been happy enough with how the first 15 minutes went. After that, they simply struggled to live with Kerry’s intensity and ferocity around the middle.

Joe O’Connor rightly got all the plaudits. I thought he was immense all through the game, but, for me Gavin White was also massive in giving Kerry that platform by winning breaking ball and driving forward at every opportunity.

Up front, David Clifford was so hard to handle. Any time he gained possession, he either created a score or took it on himself.

Kerry had too many fires needing put out and, in the end, Tyrone came up short in terms of their match-ups, but that’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s hard to pin all of these Kerry players down.

From a Kerry point of view, moving forward to the final Seán O’Shea was relatively quiet. Paudie Clifford was quite enough, so it’s clear that they also have areas to work on because there is no doubt that they will need all of their big players on final day against Donegal.

Donegal got the job done early on in their semi-final with a swashbuckling display against the Royals, romping home to a massive win.

I said here last week that I felt that Meath would come up against an opponent that they hadn’t faced in terms of quality so far this year. That’s exactly how the game panned out.

I am not just saying this because of how the game went, but from the very first moment when Meath won the throw-in and burst through the Donegal defence and hit the post, I said to myself these lads are in bother today.

When you’re playing against a team like Donegal, you have to take every single opportunity that presents itself so when you miss the first one like that, I’m afraid the writing is already on the wall for you.

Meath continued to kick wide after wide. When they look back on the game, they will notice that that’s the trap that Donegal set for them.

They more or less let Meath shoot away from there because they knew that what they were going to get from all of those shots wouldn’t be enough to hurt them.

Donegal’s defence set up just outside the arc, tempting the Meath players to shoot on sight and naively they fell straight into that trap.

Meath continued to play the style of football that got them into the semi-final and that’s admirable. The problem with that is, when you are up against an opponent so high in quality like Donegal, then that approach and that style of play only adds oxygen to their fire.

Eventually, they will begin to overrun you. Meath will look for the positives, but I’m afraid there is no point looking at last weekend’s game.

They will have to look at their campaign as a whole and try to build on the steps that they have taken this season to try and get themselves back to that stage again next year.

For the rest of us, we have exciting times ahead as we gear up for what should be a fascinating encounter with two contrasting styles of play, but yet the two best teams in the country going head to head for Sam.