THE TEAM THAT JACK REBUILT
Kildare showing signs of life again after a decade in doldrums
ONE of the great consolations of the ad-hoc Championship has been the return of drama. Football is, for one more season at least, fostering tales of the unexpected. The provincial triumphs of Cavan and Tipperary last winter were directly attributable to the knock-out format forced on the GAA by the pandemic.
The chance of similar stories lingers into this summer, but the expected return of a more conventional format from 2022 should see the rigid old order re-established.
The return to a second-chance system favours the game’s stronger teams (if not Dublin, who never lose). However, the qualifier system is too easily decried as favouring the mighty over the minnow.
Some of the most exciting tales in modern football were accommodated by the qualifiers, after all, and the few surprises cultivated in the game over the past decade were staged in new formats.
Kildare were, for a time, one of the brilliant back-door stories. They reached at least the quarter-finals of the All-Ireland Championship between 2008 and 2012, and in 2010 lost a semi-final to Down by two points; a free with the last kick of the game from Rob Kelly was turned on to the crossbar, denying the Lilywhites a place in the final.
They were under the management of Kieran McGeeney for those five seasons, and again in 2013, his sixth and final campaign in charge when they lost a round-three qualifier to Tyrone.
McGeeney was gone as manager later that year, losing out by a single vote in a ballot of club delegates.
His impact on the county was enormous, but the gains Kildare made in that time dissolved with time. That’s inevitably the way in
‘DEFEAT TO DONEGAL IN 2011 WAS ONE OF THEIR LAST FLOURISHES’
sport, where progress is best nurtured by success.
And silverware eluded Kildare, despite running Dublin to three points in an outstanding display in the 2009 Leinster final. They lost a provincial semi-final to Dublin by a single point two years later. Dublin would end that season with their first All-Ireland in 16 years.
The decade since has seen them become a phenomenon of unprecedented dimensions in the game.
Everyone else has lagged, but some have lagged worse than others. While Mayo, Kerry, Tyrone and Donegal have tried to resist Dublin’s march with varying degrees of conviction, opposition in Leinster has faded away to nothing in the decade since Kildare held them to a point in a Leinster semi-final.
The years since have seen supporters and observers wait for the rise of credible local opposition to the champions. On grounds of tradition, population, and resources, it is to Kildare and Meath that people look.
Neither looks close enough to cause Dublin serious worry this summer, but the meeting of the two counties in this afternoon’s Division 2 semi-final is an opportunity for two developing sides to gauge their efforts against near neighbours.
They last met in a riotous Leinster semi-final in mid-November, with Meath winning by nine points despite managing a score less than Kildare: a 5-9 to 0-15 score-line spoke to the oddness of the times but also to the fragility of the reconstruction work started by Jack O’Connor.
Last season was his first one in the job, and no manager could be reasonably measured by such a dislocated year. Their three League games so far brought more evidence of a group with talent – but that also remains a project.
They started the League with a four-point win over Cork, but lost by a goal at home to Clare in round two. Their place in the semi-finals was assured by a 13-point win over Laois, after which O’Connor seemed in characteristically measured form.
‘Look, we’re just trying to build a bit of confidence,’ he said. ‘We’re just trying to build fellas up, get a bit of belief, build a panel.’
In their best days under McGeeney, Kildare were not free or easy scorers, but rather a supremely drilled, fit, aggressive and disciplined side.
They were capable of matching the leading teams physically, and played in a fashion that gave the lie to easy slurs about McGeeney favouring a defensive style.
They never employed the massed defence tactics that others did, but it was irresistible for some of McGeeney’s critics to dismiss his football as ‘northern’ – old firm speak for unconventional.
The closest that side came to success was in that 2010 semi-final against Down, but their most admirable stand came almost a year later.
IT WAS Saturday, July 30 and the game threw in at 6pm. Donegal had cut through tradition and expectation to claim the Ulster title, and after beating Kildare, they would play an infamously rigid game against Dublin in the semi-finals.
Sniffiness about the tactics used by Jim McGuinness was already audible the evening they arrived in Dublin 3 to play Kildare, but the teams engaged in one of the most memorable knockout matches of the modern age.
Extra time was required, and the sun was slipping behind the terraced houses by the time Kevin Cassidy conjured up a famous winning point off his left boot.
It devastated Kildare, and would prove the last of their magnificent flourishes under McGeeney. And there were certainly times in those six seasons when they were magnificent.
They actually led Donegal in the dying minutes of extra time that breathless July night, but could not hold out against a team that would, within the year, prove themselves one of the most important, if fleeting forces, in the modern game. McGuinness was moved to a characteristic moment of reflection weeks after his team came through the match.
‘People are very rarely alive,’ he said. ‘And for those 20 minutes in extra time what was going on in my mind was, “This is unbelievable. These boys are in the thick of this now”.’
And Kildare were with them, stride for stride. Donegal dropped back but did not fall out of relevance the way Kildare have done.
Cian O’Neill’s four seasons in charge had their moments, none better than the Newbridge-or Nowhere qualifier win against Mayo in 2018 that put them into the inaugural Super 8s.
That baking night in Newbridge was another reminder of their talent, but also their gumption.
Not since those turn-of-the-decade days under McGeeney, though, have Kildare consistently shown it.
Winning their way back to Division 1 would be an important sign of improvement under O’Connor, but it would also edge Kildare back to those situations where feeling alive in the way described by McGuinness, is possible.
The draw for Leinster this year sees them play the winners of Offaly and Louth in a quarter-final. There is another draw for the last four, and the chance of being pitched in against Dublin and having their summer probably ended in mid-July.
They are details to be decided, and nothing can be easily assumed about a match against the winners of Offaly and Louth.
Kildare’s days of mixing it with the best have to be earned anew.
Old glories won’t sustain them, but they can inspire them.