...but it’s a rough day for Rory
Donegal star suffers season-ending injury
EOGHAN BÁN GALLAGHER has been ruled out for the remainder of the season after breaking his ankle in training. The Donegal star sustained the injury on Tuesday evening and was rushed to Letterkenny General Hospital where it is understood an x-ray confirmed he had broken his ankle, bringing his season to an end. The injury to the 23-year-old ace has rocked Donegal ahead of Sunday’s crunch Super 8s showdown against Kerry at Croke Park, which Declan Bonner’s team need to win to avoid a potential winner-takes-all final-round clash with Mayo. Gallagher, after a string of high-quality performances over the past two seasons, has established himself as one of Donegal’s key players. He was a surprise omission from last year’s All-Star team after a number of highpowered displays saw him tipped to win a place on the team of the year. He has maintained that level of performance this summer, where his strength and speed made him a powerful ball-carrying presence on a Donegal team that successfully defended their Ulster crown. Gallagher is a big loss for Sunday’s big game where he
IT’S rare that a manager’s legacy extends to a broadcast that makes the primetime news bulletin on RTÉ. Páidí Ó Sé pulled that trick off and will be remembered fondly for his famous interview with Marty Morrissey while on the Kerry team holiday to South Africa.
That was the one in which he pointed out to Robben Island and invoked the spirit of Nelson Mandela in trying to address the rumpus over his ‘animals’ comment about the unforgiving nature of Kerry supporters.
Cian O’Neill’s legacy with Kildare will invariably incorporate his ‘Newbridge or Nowhere’ stance, his public address to a national audience that made the GAA sit up and rethink the decision to take home advantage off Kildare for last summer’s crucial qualifier against Mayo. We all know how that one turned out.
On 2FM’s Game On show on Tuesday night, former Cavan player Seanie Johnston — who moonlighted with Kildare during the Kieran McGeeney era — captured the essence of his four-year time in charge.
‘I think he’s had a very good tenure. He got them at a very low ebb when they were in Division 3. They got two consecutive promotions — I know they went down then from Division 1 and failed to get back up this year.
‘He got them to their first Leinster final in eight years.
‘He really stood up for his players last year and gained a huge amount of popularity and praise for the way he dealt with the situation for the Mayo game. He did perform quite well… I think he comes out of his four years with his head held high.’
And yet, for all his qualities, there was a sense of a natural ending when Kildare performed adequately in the Super 8s, the round-robin All-Ireland quarterfinal stage, losing a one-score game to Monaghan in round one, losing a one-score game to Galway in round two when attacking talisman Daniel Flynn was sent off, and rattling Kerry in Killarney before losing another man in Neil Flynn and losing by 12 points.
With Flynn deciding to take a sabbatical from football this season, the edge just seemed to go off things in 2019. A mixumgatherum League campaign in Division 2 was followed up by a routine defeat by Dublin in the Leinster semi-final and a routine exit against Tyrone in the qualifiers. It begs the question as to whether O’Neill’s successor can build a team that is actually capable of challenging Dublin and making Leinster interesting again.
On paper, they certainly are an attractive enough proposition to have the names of recentlydeposed Monaghan manager Malachy O’Rourke linked to the job, along with former Kerry AllIreland-winning manager Jack O’Connor. The latter was involved on the Moorefield ticket with Ross Glavin where O’Connor’s two sons Éanna and Cian were togging out.
Given O’Connor’s public complaints that the current Under-20 Championship has been downgraded due to its timing and repositioning as a developmental competition, a role like Kildare looks like a decent fit for someone who has never made any secret of his ambitions as a manager.
Kildare cult hero Johnny Doyle is one obvious option as part of a backroom team, having cut his teeth at adult management with Maynooth at Sigerson Cup level and even lined out with the county junior team this summer.
Johnston posed a key question after the four-year term of Kildare native O’Neill who made the commitment of travelling up and down from his Cork IT base for training.
‘Do Kildare now need another big name like with Kieran McGeeney? The fan base they had around that six or seven years was immense. They followed them everywhere. There was massive talk about Kildare. Maybe they need that again to get that link back with the senior team and the supporters. ‘When Kildare are going well the supporters come out in massive numbers.
‘This is a really important appointment. They have a lot of players who are around 24, 25, coming into their prime — you want to be getting the most out of those years. Getting the right man could pay massive dividends for them.
‘If Kildare go and announce Malachy O’Rourke or Jack O’Connor or with a backroom team of Dermot Earley and Johnny Doyle, Newbridge will be thronged for the Bord na Mona pre-season tournament. Absolutely thronged.’
Meath might be the team featuring in the Super 8s this weekend but no team in Leinster looks better placed to challenge Dublin when the base of underage success is factored in. When Kildare won the Eirgrid All-Ireland U20 Championship last year, Jimmy Hyland was selected as the Player of the Year after a series of eye-catching performances in attack.
Team-mates Aaron Masterson, Mark Dempsey, Mark Barrett, Aaron O’Neill, and Brian McLoughlin were also honoured on a team of the Championship selection that featured the top-20 players. Midfielder Masterson also made the short-list of three for the Player of the Year award.
Just last month, the Kildare minors beat Dublin to win a fourth Leinster title in the past seven seasons. During that time, 2017 is the only summer Kildare haven’t either won or appeared in a provincial final.
Unfortunately for Kildare, the relentless progress of the Dublin senior team has shown how difficult it is to translate that underage promise to the senior stage where Jim Gavin’s team have had it all their own way over the same timeframe.
As Johnston put it, this is a really important appointment. The clock is already ticking.