Midleton struck late and struck fatally. Their timing was perfection. A third consecutive county semi-final punched.<\/p>\n
Midleton led the opening half of this tetchy quarter-final contest on three occasions. The first of those was on 14 minutes and the last on 24 minutes. They didn\u2019t lead again until the fourth minute of second-half stoppages. They came with a powerful late surge. So powerful that it both dwarfed and usurped the Glen\u2019s own surge late in the first half and the five-point gap created from such.<\/p>\n
Midleton firing the final three scores is far from the full picture. A far more rounded picture is Midleton outgunning their city opponents by 1-9 to 0-3 from the 40th minute onwards.<\/p>\n
On 39 minutes, Luke Horgan landed a boomer from out the field. The Glen ahead by seven. 2-14 to 1-10. The largest gap of the evening. Midleton\u2019s yet-to-get-going challenge was drowning under the light rain that fell from long before throw-in.<\/p>\n
The score that revived and revitalised them arrived on 42 minutes. Sub Luke O\u2019Farrell was a key kitchen worker in its cooking up. All Midleton subs, in fact, busied themselves upon their introduction. Tommy O\u2019Connell razored a sharp pass to Cormac Beausang. The full-forward applied a slick finish for his and Midleton\u2019s second green flag.<\/p>\n
Eoin O\u2019Leary issued an almost instant white flag response for Tom\u00e1s Mulcahy\u2019s side. It proved their sole white flag between the 39th and 58th minute. The ball inside wasn\u2019t the first-half magnet it had been. Their middle third was losing control to Tommy O\u2019Connell, Mikey Finn, and full-back Eoin Moloney who\u2019d been shoved out from his starting station on Patrick Horgan after picking up a first-half yellow card.<\/p>\n
Killian McDermott and a Lehane hat-trick of points – O\u2019Connell and Finn winning the two frees thrown over by the Magpies centre-forward – brought parity four minutes from the hour. They hadn\u2019t been level in over half an hour.<\/p>\n
Of the many subdued Glen forwards by this juncture, it was Simon Kennefick who stood out from the silence to snipe a pair of points in less than 30 seconds to shove the Glen within reach of a first semi-final appearance in four years. In the eight minutes following Kennefick\u2019s pair, they couldn\u2019t find another score.<\/p>\n
Luke O\u2019Farrell halved the deficit. Lehane, following another foul on Finn, wiped it out in the third minute of injury-time. O\u2019Farrell for the lead, his second. What a bench contribution from the 35-year-old. Fellow sub David Cremin drew the foul that brought Lehane\u2019s tally to double digits and doubled Midleton\u2019s lead to two.<\/p>\n
Two minutes past the allotted four, a foul on Glen sub Jake Brosnan offered Patrick Horgan an opportunity to assume hero status above what he already holds in the Glen. His 20-metre free was not cleanly struck, was somewhat comfortably saved.<\/p>\n
Midleton have not been bettered in their last seven quarter-final appearances. Not since 2012 have they fallen at this stage of the road.<\/p>\n
For a game that was level on five occasions across the opening half, the last of which came on 24 minutes, a five-point difference at the break spoke to the strength of the Glen\u2019s galloping finish to the first half hour.<\/p>\n
1-3 without reply. A one-point deficit transformed into a five-point lead. Yet another Patrick Horgan placed-ball masterclass. 2-7 out of the Glen\u2019s half-time 2-10 total belonged to him.<\/p>\n
It was Hoggie himself who was fouled for the converted free that represented the opening score of their late-in-the-half burst. It wasn\u2019t the score, mind, that lit the touchpaper for that burst. That score came three minutes later. Dean Brosnan was fouled late by Cormac Walsh after the former had lorried in his delivery. The free, 25 metres from goal, was drilled to the net by the Glen No.14.<\/p>\n
Another turning point presented itself in the ensuing play. Midleton were awarded a free out for Horgan overcarrying. Midleton\u2019s over-zealousness in celebrating the free saw it downgraded to a throw-in. They lost the throw-in, Miche\u00e1l Mullins pointing.<\/p>\n
Mullins\u2019 second, 10 seconds upon the restart, shoved their advantage out to 2-11 to 1-8. It would grow another point more. They faded thereafter, both in energy and creativity. Midleton roared late. They still have a voice and a say in this championship.<\/p>\n
\n Scorers for Midleton: C Lehane (0-10, 0-8 frees); C Beausang (2-1); K McDermott (0-3); R O\u2019Regan, L O\u2019Farrell (0-2 each); M Finn (0-1).<\/p>\n
\n Scorers for Glen Rovers: P Horgan (2-9, 1-6 frees); S Kennefick (0-3); M Mullins, E O\u2019Leary (0-2 each); L Horgan (0-1 each).<\/p>\n
\n MIDLETON: B Saunderson; C Smyth, E Moloney, T O\u2019Leary Hayes; L Dineen, T O\u2019Connell, R O\u2019Regan; S O\u2019Meara, M Finn; C Walsh, C Lehane, K McDermott; P White, C Beausang, A Quirke.<\/p>\n
\n Subs: L O\u2019Farrell for Quirke, D Cremin for Walsh (both 40 mins); E McGrath for O\u2019Meara (49); P Connaughton for White (51); S O\u2019Sullivan for C Smyth (57).<\/p>\n
\n GLEN ROVERS: C Hickey; C McCarthy, A Lynch, L Coughlan; B Moylan, E Downey, R Downey; A O\u2019Donovan, M Mullins; L Horgan, D Brosnan, R Dunne; S Kennefick, P Horgan, E O\u2019Leary.<\/p>\n
\n Subs: J Brosnan for O\u2019Donovan, L Quilligan for Dunne (both 50); S Lynam for D Brosnan (57).<\/p>\n
REFEREE: W King.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Midleton struck late and struck fatally. Their timing was perfection. A third consecutive county semi-final punched. Midleton led…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,24,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-74281","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-cork-gaa","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}