Leinster championship 2013

well now not long to the offaly game in croke park its now main focusafter club championsip last weekend

We'll have to work hard against Offaly, I expect it to be closer than last year. They have improved under McDonnell and they got promoted. We all know how close Limerick pushed us last year. But no matter what, you'd have to expect us to pull through.

Dublin is the be all and end all this year. It will be a massive game, everything is on the line. It will be tough but we are definitely capable of winning it.

The major problem in recent years have been in midfield and centreback. Are we any closer to rectifying either of those? The reports on Flynn from the weekend were not great nor were the reported injuries of Eoin Doyle and Seanie. Hopefully a few weeks will make a big difference but the Dubs cast a big shadow over our season.

HauntedGraffiti wrote:

We'll have to work hard against Offaly, I expect it to be closer than last year. They have improved under McDonnell and they got promoted. We all know how close Limerick pushed us last year. But no matter what, you'd have to expect us to pull through.

Dublin is the be all and end all this year. It will be a massive game, everything is on the line. It will be tough but we are definitely capable of winning it.

Agree Dublin is a massive game but you can't say everything is on the line. There are not many counties could hope to compete with Dublin if they play to their full potential. We have to be realistic and accept that the qualifier route is the likeliest scenario this year. And besides if we did beat Dublin, knowing our luck we would probably end up meeting them later in the Championship. My hope is that after losing to them in Leinster we catch them cold later in the Championship or failing that someone else does.

I hope Kildare get a good stern test from offaly they have improved from last year would be good if the game was close then kildare pull away just at the end here's hoping anyway.
All the focus is on Offaly we'l worry about whats next on June the 2nd but...
what i will say about a POSSIBLE! semi final v the dubs (no disrespect to Westmeath or Carlow i just cant see either of them catching the Dubs) and I stress possible we dont want to get ahead of ourselves.
Kildare have a good chance against Dublin.
Kildare wont go up to croke park and hand over the final place. It wont be as easy or quite the walkover for the Dubs as analysts are making out.
I think Mc geeney and (what a lot of people are forgetting this year) is we have Jason Ryan on board tactically and just maybe this year we can overturn the Dubs and catch them on the hop but we will have to raise our game big time! Kildare have the potential to do it with a bit of belief and some luck for a change.
Kildare can take that leinster final spot no point walking into croke park thinking otherwise.
Offaly first though lads
Cill Dara abu!!

According to Joe Brolly, Dublin will absolutely paste Kildare - this will probably lead the bookmakers to shorten our odds considerably. Also, this is as close to a concrete guarantee of a Kildare Leinster Championship win as you can get, but we don't want to get ahead of ourselves.

Even Brolly gets an odd thing right - remember a broken clock gets the time right twice a day.

Jimmers and Murof you might say to me your been realistic but we'l never get over the Dub hurdle with that defeatist attitude.
1.Kildare played division 1 football this year
2. The under 21's that Kildare have blooded have brought strength and depth
3.Jason ryan's tactical awareness
That's 3 more reason's that could push us close to winning Dublin im more optimistic this year anyway.
You go up there with a negative mentality your psychology beaten you may aswell put a blue ribbon around the delaney cup before the ball is thrown in.

Jason Ryan's record against Dublin is similar to Geezers, no wins!! His addition to the back room team while very welcome is no reason to suggest we will finally beat them. Following the league game it is very hard to make a case for us to beat Dublin, we will beat Offaly, quite comfortably as well which is far from ideal preparation for what is coming down the road.

whiteknight wrote:

Jimmers and Murof you might say to me your been realistic but we'l never get over the Dub hurdle with that defeatist attitude.
1.Kildare played division 1 football this year
2. The under 21's that Kildare have blooded have brought strength and depth
3.Jason ryan's tactical awareness
That's 3 more reason's that could push us close to winning Dublin im more optimistic this year anyway.
You go up there with a negative mentality your psychology beaten you may aswell put a blue ribbon around the delaney cup before the ball is thrown in.

No one on here is likely to be playing!

Football can be unpredictable and teams can surprise you on a given day but realistically you'll probably get odds of about 5/2 on Kildare to win against Dublin if we get over Offaly. That's probably a fair reflection of our chances in a two horse race.

We done well in the league and if all goes well on the day, we should really win against Offaly.

Our lucky escape against Limerick, and the defeats to Meath and Cork last year, are still very much on my mind.

I think the collapse in the league game with the Dubs, has cast a shadow of doubt on our expectations for 2013, and therefore, confidence levels among the supporters are not overly high.

I will be there cheering them on, however, I would say that I am more hopeful than optimistic concerning Kildare this year.

"You go up there with a negative mentality your psychology beaten you may aswell put a blue ribbon around the delaney cup before the ball is thrown in".


Sorry whiteknight, you seem to be under the assumption that I am a current player . I wont be meeting any of the players before the game so the defeatism wont be contagious.

I will still travel in hope as I always do, probablly no different from most people on here in that regard.

The U21s didn't start against Dublin in the league, and as we all know they have brought a lot of dynamism to the Kildare set up this year, and provided some qualities we were badly missing in 2012.

Dublin will deservedly be favourites and quite honestly I would fancy them to win, but if we can ensure we aren't cleaned out in midfield again, and improve our forward play, we're in with a shout. I think the latter is actually the more difficult. Forward play is the trickiest thing of all in football, it's like melody in music.

But we shouldn't forget that Tyrone beat them in the league and pushed them all the way in the final, without Stephen O'Neill.

I don't buy the Sun but it was shown to me today, that sort of article bugs the sh*t outta me, even before a ball is kicked. Why publicly put ouselves up there? Walk the walk and then talk the bloody talk. Ahh I give up, rant over.

Offaly have thrown 3 lads off their panel - Brady, Pender and Dalton - for disciplinary reasons apparently. Still time for them to be brought back for June 1st but not a good sign for them. That said, we have too much history of failing to get over the shorter hurdles under McGeeney that we'd want to be lazer focused on Offaly at this stage.

Having said that I think we are very much the outsiders if we were to meet Dublin. We had the worst defence in Division One and a clear inability to deal with speed. I can't imagine Dublin slowing down on harder ground somehow. While the injection of youth has improved us going forward our tactical approach still seemed fairly haphazard in attack with no clearly discernible pattern. And we lacked a midfield.. All of that plus collapses to Meath, Cork and Dublin within the last 12 months does not add up to winning formula you'd imagine. That's realism rather than defeatism and clearly McGeeney and Ryan will be working on building up the team 's mental state, and (hopefully) looking to fix the faults evident in the spring. I remain pretty convinced in the cold light of day that we're not at Dublin's level but I don't believe the gap is insurmountable on a given day. An injury or off day for Golden Child, a fluky goal, Kildare lads playing to their peak while Dub are off their game slightly - any of those could bridge the gap on a given day - that's the beauty of sport.

But let's get Offaly out of the way first...

Don't know what was in the Sun, not very clear there. I'm guessing it's from yesterday's Leinster championship launch but I certainly don't recall McGeeney or Leper making any big claims about Kildare. Geezer said that he thought the current group would win a Leinster and have big days with Kildare - although he mightn't be manager when it happens.

This is pretty much everything that he covered.


http://www.daraghoconchuir.ie/blog.php?id=2580

I would agree, it obviously makes sense that Kildare are underdogs against Dublin, if they make it that far. That doesn't mean they don't win but it would represent an upset if they did.

Ah come off it now kickingking and murof both know fully well what I was trying to say. God all almighty you werent suppose to take it like I was literally talking to a kildare player.
Im more of a glass is half full type of a person.
Kildare go up with nothing to lose and hopefully when kildare supporters walk down jones road. They will be more postitve than some on here.

Agree with pretty much everything you say there crofter. The one thing Kildare like to be down the years is the underdog. I think being favourite hampers Kildare more than any other County I can think of. Also like Meath last year the law of averages must be near switching to Kildare against Dublin.
I had a bad feeling going into that game just because we had beaten them so many times they were bound to pull one out of the bag. Likewise it may just be our turn against Dublin. It's not much to cling onto but you never know.
I know Offaly is all that matters at the moment, but if we do get over them I'm hoping that getting beat by Dublin so many times in recent memory will sicken the players so much that they just refuse to lose again.

Didn't hear about the Offaly camp but that is not good for them so near the summer.

Good summation there Crofter and yes, you are 100 per cent right, Wicklow, Louth and Meath mean we are not entitled to take Offaly for granted.

I thought - and still think - Meath are a poor team and even described our match with them last year as a "formality" before the inevitable Kildare Dublin Leinster final. You would have thought I'd have learned my lesson but no... It was a painful reminder that we can never take anything for granted in Kildare!

One game at a time lads! Woah the pony! Offaly first. Really looking forward to the 1st June!

So who would start V offaly lads? Is there any challenge match at the weekend?

[quote="Crofter"]Offaly have thrown 3 lads off their panel - Brady, Pender and Dalton - for disciplinary reasons apparently) also the three lads thrown off endenderry panel as well

Didn't really know where to post this but this thread seems the most appropriate.. Many posters put a team into the fantasy Gaelic team competition?? Just sitting down to do it now, would like to see what other people's teams look like too!

grabber wrote:

Didn't really know where to post this but this thread seems the most appropriate.. Many posters put a team into the fantasy Gaelic team competition?? Just sitting down to do it now, would like to see what other people's teams look like too!

Yes I put a team in. A warning - once you select your team you can't change it - most of the fantasy games allow you to change your team right up to when the first game starts. Also a big flaw is there are no transfers until the All-Ireland QF's so you need to select players who you think will play most games between now and the QF's e.g. if you select 2 Donegal and 2 Tyrone players, the players from the team that lose that game won't be able to contribute any points until the QF (if they get that far!). So effectively you need to pick 2 players from the teams you believe will reach the various provincial finals. Another flaw - qualifier games aren't included in the scoring.

Link below for those interested

http://www.fantasygaelic.ie/

Sounds too flawed to bother with if you ask me .. good luck to those who entered!