Drill of the Kil O’NEILL: DEFENCE IS KEY AGAINST DUBS

CROKE PARK, 4PM

LEINSTER SFC FINAL

you problems it’s Dublin’s.

“You could see the speed, the fluidity, the movement, the timing against Westmeath, it was all really impressive.

From someone who loves basketball as well as football, you could see a lot of carefully devised movement patterns there. That’s where we’re really at at the moment, trying to tighten up defensively.”

Past results don’t augur well for Kildare. They’ve been beaten by a total of 56 points over their last four games against Dublin. They’ve also won just one of their last eight league or Championship games at Croke Park, or five of their last 20 if you really want to ram home the statistic.

But O’neill is developing a powerful and highly mobile young team led by ex-professionals Kevin Feely, Paddy Brophy and Daniel Flynn.

Whisper it quietly but Kildare could just represent the best chance of a team beating Dublin in the Leinster Championship since Meath did it in 2010.

O’neill said: “Sometimes you just need to back yourself. We’ve been playing quite well this year. Obviously we’ve had a few speed bumps along the road, like up in Derry and in the League final.

“Now we’ve never met anything like Dublin or the level they can play to and, to be fair, we’ve never met a Division 1 team this year so that has to be factored in. “But we’ve invested a lot of time, energy and hard work in getting our game plan right for the players that we have, which is totally different to the squad that we had last year.” The fit again Paul Cribbin is another ex-professional in O’neill’s ranks and he feels they’ve brought something special to the group. Whether it’s enough to prevent Dublin winning a record seventh straight Leinster title remains to be seen.

O’neill said: “Those guys are not just good footballers for Kildare, they’re good humans, great guys to have around.

“I think every squad needs that, whether they’ve had a pro career or not, every squad needs that substance in their group.

“And we’ve a lot of substance in our group.”