Leinster Club Championship

All the best to the lads tomorrow, will be a very tough game but if we perform as we have been hopefully we will be there or thereabouts!!

Hard luck to the Sash today.

The injuries and suspension just caught up on us today I felt, lost three of our starting defenders before half time, not being able to call on Barry Coffey and Smithy from the bench hurt us as well but nobody in Sarsfields could have asked anymore of the players today, they left everything on the field.

Sounds like a missed opportunity for Sarsfields today. Portlaoise certainly know how to beat Kildare teams and that usually involves scoring 2 goals and not conceding themselves.
To progress in Leinster we need to learn how to score goals which are so important in games at this time of the year due to the bad weather conditions and heavy pitches. We have been poor in this aspect for so long. I think the points made by umpireonditch about Kildare teams have been validated today

LillieLad wrote:

Hard luck to the Sash today.

A winning attitude. Great chance of Leinster this year. All week they were going to beat average team, waiting now to hear how they lost to more seasoned team. 0-3 0-0 after 20 and utterly dominant therefore better players and plan and still lose. Luck my arse. You won't hear that in too many other successful counties or clubs. The fear of winning in Kildare is unreal. Hope Castledermot actually show a pair next week or we may as well be snipped right here, forget the snake returning as a crest, how about a Eunach! Already we are the least successful GAA county in Gaelic games in Leinster this year. Hard luck, well done, no standards.

And before Sarsfields people take it personally, been county wide for years. The chips are down, best leave the table. Hard luck indeed. (BTW someome put Leinster final video on another thread and for first time in years watching back made me proud of Kildare being hard. These days sure we're just a dual carriageway. So many say it maybe we're starting to believe it. Waiting to see next Kildare man take 50/50 hit like that video, real men. Now we are Laois, Westmeath, Louth...).

Don't hold back there Tommy.... Someone has really p*ssed on your cornflakes.

Having actually been at the game, Sarsfields were very unlucky. You can talk about winning attitude but they were unlucky. They were playing with 14 men for 35 minutes and they should not have been. It was a very poor decision - I can't blame the ref as he was going on the umpires and they just did the usual 'There was two of them in it' though Lawlor was utterly innocent. And they somehow missed Cahillane's intervention, which while hardly heinous, was the most aggressive. But it was Rogers that bumped into Lawlor and that somehow gets the poor lad a second yellow.

I thought Sash were great and you barely knew they were playing a half hour with 14. And when you think they were without some key players. Loved Ben McCormack - could be playing on the wing for the All Blacks (that reference is just for you Tommy). My God he'd be some boy on the hard sod. Lightning. You could hear the buzz of anticipation the minute he got the ball. If he can add a finishing product, he'll be serious but even the number of frees he wins close to goal makes him invaluable.

Portlaoise just had the bit more cuteness up front, though the Sash should never have been caught out defensively as they were for Smith's winner.

Let's face it, Portlaoise were heavy favourites and while Sarsfields had chances to win it, Portlaoise had more wides, some of them shocking, hit the crossbar when the game was still scoreless. Any suggestion that they blew it or feared winning is bollocks, to be frank... they showed what the doyen of sports entertainment commentators, Jim Ross would describe as tremendous intestinal fortitude... sometimes, it IS just a case of hard luck. One team has to lose and can't always be that they fucked up when they lost. Of course in a one-point game, there will always have been chances. But this notion that a team and its manager is a genius for coming out on the right side of a one-point game and the losing team / manager are gormless, yellow fools for coming out on the other side is brainless. Eamonn Fitzmaurice is neither a god nor a moron. It's football. Jesus H...

To be fair, Sarsfields have had enough thrown at them. I called them Moorefield on Twitter. Can never set foot in Newbridge again.

One of the best posts I have read in a long time there here Ogie. Fair play. Hard luck to Sarsfields. I believe the ridiculous sending off was a major factor in the one point loss.

Great post Ogie.

Agreed Ogie, that cuteness is what we lack as a county. Be it at schools level, minor level u21 level, club level and senior level.
Our underage teams of late are so well prepared that they can blow sides away by their conditioning alone but when it comes to similarly conditioned teams we will lose out with this lack of cuteness. Be it Galway in Tullamore 2 years ago in the U21 semi final or the minors in recent years v Tipp and Roscommon or our clubs in the leinster senior club champ.

Coaches can do all the drills and have all the game plans if they want but unless kids are spending hours a day with an O'Neills ball in there hand on their own with mates kicking and catching and turning etc the situation won't change.

Teams training 2-3-4-5-6 times a week depending on who you listen to but this is maybe a couple of coaches catering for a squad of up to 30 fellas. The stuff they do is relativly easy. Make a team fitter, faster, more defensive, more attacking etc etc. But the bit of class and cuteness that comes with winning games, the likes of the Gooch or John Doyles or Henry Shefflins or Pete Canavans comes from hours and hours spent on a daily basis from the age of 5 or 6 or 7 until the day they hang up their boots.

I remember about 8 or 9 years ago one of the first coaching confrence weekend courses that Kildare ran in Clane. Johnny Doyle was doing a workshop at it. This was when he was at the height of his powers. He was doing a workshop on forward play or something like that. I just remember the drills he was doing. you didnt need a heap of cones or 6 fellas in different colour bibs. All you needed was a ball and goal posts. It was stuff he had obviously done on his own repeatedly down the years in Allenwood or Hawkfield and that practise is what made him stand out above the others in Kildare.

If anyone listens to podcasts Graham Hunter does one where he inteviews different ground football personalities and Strachen was one. This is the kind of thing he talks about.

Good Post Ogie.. summed up well.. As well as the schocking sending off.. Home advantage was as usual a factor, and was certainly worth the normal few Points.

Regarding Kildare Club Teams in Leinster.. TMH, Monasterevin, Maynooth, all showed a fair bit of bottle in recent Years.

Sarsfields biggest failing this year has been their inability to score goals. In the 6 games we have played since the championship resumed Sarsfields only scored goals in 2 of those games, one of which was an "iffy" penalty against Celbridge. They have managed to cover this by being water tight at the back, only conceding one goal prior to yesterday but conceding 2 goals in winter football without scoring any is always going to leave a team facing a massive uphill task. However I couldn't fault a single player yesterday, it was a gutsy performance which unfortunately ended in defeat.

It just goes to show the fine line between success and failure. Had Ray Cahill's free dropped a few inches the other side of the post and Sarsfields had salvaged a draw the whole discourse would be completely different. Everyone would be hailing a gritty and battling Sarsfields display.

By all accounts Lawlor's sending off was ridiculously harsh and they were unlucky to lose Alan Scully to injury. That was their two starting corner backs gone before half time. Conor Tiernan would have been a great man to carry and retain ball in those conditions and Alan Smith would have provided another outlet up front. Portlaoise weren't great and were missing Tuohy themselves so Sarsfields will still rightly feel it was one that got away from them but their was no shame in their defeat considering the circumstances.

The hard thing for them to stomach will be that there is no guarantee in club football that they will be back again in in Leinster for the next few years. They're a young team with a load of talent but you could have said the same about Athy a few years ago and they've only had one losing appearance in a final since then. Moorefield, Athy and Celbridge will all be back strong again next year.

I would echo the comments regarding Ben McCormack. He was seriously impressive against Moorefield earlier on in the championship roasting a queue of quality club defenders. It will be interesting to see how he gets on with the county u21s over the next two seasons.

Watched highlights last night on TG4 and no doubt Sarsfields deserved a draw considering the harsh sending off. However they were opened up to easily for the goals and the winning point. That Portlaoise team was very beatable and it was a missed oppurtunity as Leinster doesn't look very strong this year.
Agree about McCormack he looks a real talent for the future. Thought Dempsey had a fine game and took his points well. He didn't progress as much as I thought he would this year but he has the size to really trouble defenders. Hopefully we will see both of these young lads in the senior ranks in the near future.