Kildare v Longford

A great weekend for Kildare football with emphatic wins for both the seniors and minors. That's 2 Leinster minor championships in 3 years for the minors and one step away from an AI quarter final for the seniors.

The players and management of both teams must be commended for their displays this weekend. I'm looking forward to the qualifier draw on Monday morning to see who we get.

Well done to the seniors and the minors. Its just what we needed.

Freddy Krueger wrote:

Ohtoohtobe wrote:

To me Westmeath set up in a way that gave them zero chance of winning the game. Our chance might have been one per cent but at least were able to create chances to get scores. I don't think Westmeath will finish with 0-14 and as I write it looks like the winning margin will be bigger than it was in our game.

Are you for real? Our game with Dublin was over 13 minutes in. At least Westmeath made them work hard for every score.  Not too many teams will concede 2-13 aginst Dublin this year. I know they only tagged on 6 points themselves but it does show you that Dublin can be contained.

Westmeath had they better forwards would have tagged on more scores. I see Donegal and Kerry in a position to beat Dublin this year.

I am very much for real. With 20 minutes to go yesterday, Westmeath were 2-10 to 0-6 down. With 20 minutes to go in our game, we were 3-11 to 0-11 down. So pretty much the same. We continued to attack and got punished on the counter. Westmeath continued to keep 12 men back at all times and watched Dublin playing keep ball.

Imagine being 10 points down and not even trying to come back? So they lost by six points less. Big deal. There is nothing enviable in what they did. They scored the lowest total any team has managed in a Leinster final in 30 years.

Everyone goes on about how well and in how many numbers Donegal defended against Dublin last year and they did. But they also scored 3-14. It's not just about quality of forwards, you have to commit some men forward, at least on the counter.

Westmeath never even gave it a go.

The one thing we can agree on is that Kerry or Donegal have a chance of beating Dublin. I think Dublin's defence is still dodgy when you consider we could have had 1-20.

All-Ireland Football Qualifiers Round 4A draw:
Kildare v Cork/Kerry,
Fermanagh v Westmeath

I would say the claim Westmeath didn't try to win is a bit unfair. They had two weeks to work on a system designed to give them a chance, which they had at half time. But the hardest part of this system is what you do with the ball. That's what took Donegal 18 months to fine-tune. They did manage to work it quite well out of defence but any time there was a physical contest, they lost it. The runners in that situation need to be in threes. They ended up shooting from distance. It was the problem Kildare had when they tried it in the last two years with Tomás up top. They opted for going long a lot if he did manage to win it with two or three defenders around him, he hadn't the support runners.

I would think Tom Cribbin has himself a template there now. He can certainly adopt a structure of being more defensively sound and then work on being more of a threat with the ball. Conditioning and fitness are obviously huge parts of that.

As for not coming out at the end, I would say Westmeath have emerged from the game with their morale unaffected. That is no small thing. As others have said, Jack Sheedy was pilloried for being naive. It can't be every way.

O2 is right of course, Kildare tried to get a balance and when you do that, you must be clinical and really accurate with your passing because when you're committing players forward and are turned over, you're toast against Dublin.

Dublin were bad and I think this raises major question marks about them once more. Their pedestrian play was brutal given that they were not coming up against this system for the first time. All the money they have, they still are trying to beat players one and one. I'd lay money Donegal would have broken behind the cover more often, with better kick-passing and the commitment of runners in twos and threes around the ball carrier. Kerry would have kicked more points from distance.

I have no love for the Dubs but they knew themselves they were never going to lose that game. It must be hard to get your self up for a game that has only one possible outcome. they had no intensity and moved it about in the knowledge that they could do as they wished. They played in 1st gear.

There is no way if they were playing Kerry or Donegal that they would be that languid and sloppy.

I fear the real Dublin team has yet to bear it's teeth.