Summerhill prevail in extra-time to end ten-year wait for Meath football title

Summerhill 0-22 Ratoath 1-13 (AET)

The hurt is finally over for Summerhill who braved an extra-time epic at Navan's Pairc Tailteann to regain the Keegan Cup as Meath SFC champions.

Beaten narrowly by Ratoath in last year's final, and runners up on four occasions since previously claiming the title in 2013, Conor Gillespie's men dug so deep to land the club's eighth crown.

The sides were level eight times in normal time, prompting the extra 20 minutes or so and Summerhill surprisingly dominated the additional two halves, adding on seven extra-time points to just one from a fatigued Ratoath.

The 2022 winners had previously come back from six points down to defeat Dunshaughlin in the quarter-finals and got through their semi-final against Wolfe Tones despite failing to score in the entire second-half.

It looked as if they may pull off another great escape to make it back to back title successes when Daithi McGowan sent the game to extra time with a 66th minute equaliser.

But they only added one more point after that as Summerhill overcame all those years of hurt with that terrific extra-time display.

Man of the Match Eoghan Frayne was among the scorers in extra-time and finished with 0-06 for Summerhill while Barry Dardis helped himself to 0-05. Boss Gillespie will be delighted too that his defence held Ratoath to a relatively meagre 1-13 while Summerhil had 10 different scorers in total.

Aside from the glory of a first title in a decade, Summerhill will advance to the Leinster club SFC and they will travel to face Tullamore of Offaly in Round 1 on October 21/22.

Defeated Ratoath were initially boosted by the availability of former Meath attacker Joey Wallace for his first start of 2023.

The speedy full-forward came on in the