Meath are through to the Leinster football final.

The Royals beat Kildare by 2-16 to 17 points in the first of this afternoon's Leinster football semi finals at Croke Park. Goals from Andrew Tormey and Dalton McDonagh gave Meath a 2-13 to 7 points lead early in the second half. Kildare fought back in the second half, to close the gap to four points late on. But Meath held on to reach their third consecutive Leinster final.

Meath boss Mick O'Dowd praised the strength of his panel, saying it was the key that secured victory today:

“We have a huge amount of work done. I know people outside the squad or whatever might feel the injuries were impacting on us but we’ve such work done across a spread of players that we were very confident of a performance. Pretty pleased with it, yeah.”