Lilies no match for Staunton and Mayo

Kildare Ladies suffered a heavy defeat at the hands of Mayo in the TG4 All-Ireland SFC qualifier in Ballinasloe on Saturday afternoon.

Not for the first time it was Cora Staunton of Mayo who finished stop scorer with a personal tally of 1-11.

Trailing by six points at half-time, Kildare narrowed the gap back to three with an unanswered treble to kick-start the second half but they wouldn’t score again from the 64th minute, as Mayo registered 2-12, to run out comfortable winners on a final score line of Mayo 3-20 to 0-8.

The Lilies will be relegated back to the intermediate ranks if Cork beat Monaghan on Monday - but they battled gamely against quality opponents on Saturday.

They were undone in the second half when their most impressive player, Róisín Byrne, was sin-binned, and the Lilywhites had lost captain Erica Burke to injury in the first half.

In the ten minutes that Byrne was off the pitch, a four-point Mayo lead stretched out to eleven.

Scorers for Mayo – C Staunton 1-11 (8f), S Rowe 1-4, G Kelly 1-3, O Conlon & A Gilroy 0-1 each.Scorers for Kildare – R Byrne 0-4 (2f), M Price 0-2, L Scully & N Dooley 0-1 each.

Mayo

Y Byrne; R Kearns, S Tierney, N O’Malley; F Doherty, O Conlon, M Corbett; M Carter, A Gilroy; F McHale, N Kelly, D Hughes; S Rowe, C Staunton, G Kelly.  Subs: C Whyte for Gilroy (49), A Dowling for Doherty (56), S Howley for Hughes (60+2), N Moran for O’Malley (60+2), M McGing for N Kelly (60+3).

Kildare – M Hulgraine; R Cribbin, R Mernagh, R Reidy; L Scully, A Curley, T Duggan; E Burke, M Curley; N Sinnott, R Byrne, M Price; G Clifford, E Dowling, O Kirwan. Subs: A Horan for Burke (26), N Dooley for Dowling (h.t.), D McGinn for Kirwan (h.t.), Á Nash for Curley (54), S Doheny for Reidy (57).

Referee – S Joy (Kerry).