‘We can mix it with the best’
O’Callaghan says Kildare are ready to silence their critics and move on from a poor League
INEVITABLY, in the times they live in, the soundtrack to Kildare’s spring tanking was the beep beep of unsolicited social media notifications.
‘I won’t repeat anything. Some wild stuff, some stuff that couldn’t be repeated out loud,’ dismisses midfielder Kevin O’Callaghan, when pressed for a flavour of the poison served up.
A seven-game losing streak, relegation to the League’s third tier and the possibility that they will not take part in this year’s All-Ireland series was a licence for some to vent their fury in the most insidious of ways.
‘It has been tough, you just have to take it with a pinch of salt,’ explains the 26-year-old Celbridge clubman.
‘Some people are preaching hate or saying negative things online from a place of insecurities or sadness in their own lives, so sometimes you just have to pity them.
‘Sometimes you have to look at it whereby some people might not have much money and paid money to come and see us and left disappointed, so you’ve to look at it from that side of things as well.’
It is a commendable approach to take given that it is precisely that deficit in human empathy that enables such abuse in the first instance, but more than anything it is an approach informed by self-preservation.
‘I have been the brunt of a lot of the kind of abuse online as well and I don’t mind that either, my main thing with that is if I don’t know somebody personally then I am not going to take their opinion with any resolve or anything like that.
‘The same if things were going fantastically, you are not going to be listening to praise and outside noise.
‘You have to work on it. Obviously it’s never nice seeing bad things said about you online. Obviously some players might struggle and if they do hopefully they do talk to somebody about it. It’s water off a duck’s back for me, I’ve heard it all before and I will hear it all again, I’m sure. You just have to take it with a pinch of salt, you need to have a thick skin to play any sport to any high level.’
After a spring of some discontent, added to by county chairman Mick Gorman’s mid-League declaration to club delegates that results would have to improve, it may just be that Kildare’s season may be turning for the better.
Their pathway back to a Leinster final, and as a consequence a place in the All-Ireland series, has become a lot more negotiable .
They face Wicklow on Sunday in Portlaoise after the Garden County stunned Westmeath last weekend, with the prize a semifinal place against either Louth or Wexford.
It is a game that O’Callaghan could struggle to make as a result of a recurring knee injury: ‘It’s touch and go. It has been at me for nearly two years, on and off, a knee injury — patella tendonitis down the front of the knee. It’s a sore one but hopefully we can get it right.’
What he is confident of is that Kildare’s mind-set will be right for a summer charge.
‘You just draw a line in the sand and essentially the Championship is a different competition. There’s no point dwelling on what happened in the League, that’s over and done with now.
‘The consequences from that, we’ll face next season, not this season. Now we just have to build on the performances that we put in towards the end which did progressively get better as the League went on. I know the results didn’t but our performances did.
‘If we just draw one small thing from each match and put that towards the Championship preparations, that’s all we can do.’
Those improvements were modest, scoring three goals in round five against Cork helped boost an impoverished scoring rate — they averaged less than 12 points a game — and they were competitive in their final round loss to Louth.
‘Our defensive structure was very good in the last few games. If you watched us, we were well organised in those matches.
‘We probably let ourselves down in terms of our shooting efficiency or maybe the taking of our chances but we were creating as many chances as the teams we were playing. ‘We were defending really well.’ The question is if that improvement will be enough to save them from a summer in the Tailteann Cup. ‘I’m not even going to think about that for now,’ dismisses O’Callaghan. ‘We know we can mix it with the best.’
■ MATTHEW COSTELLO claimed yesterday that Meath players have not been cowed by 14 years of Dublin dominance. ‘There are a lot of young players that have beaten Dublin at minor level. There is a generation coming through that are very talented and I don’t think they’ll hold the last 10 years or so in their minds.’
“I’ve heard it all
before and I’ll hear it again” “If you watched
us, we were well organised”