Summary of the Year

It all started on a cold January Saturday in Newbridge V Westmeath. We beat them and Carlow convincingly before bowing out to Laois in the O’Byrne Cup semi final on penalties. Conleth’s was as busy as I can ever remember for the visit of the kingdom on the opening day of the league. Clifford & co couldn’t beat us and we gained a vital point after coming from behind. We travelled to Donegal with anticipation after our positive start. Unfortunately it was in the North where our defensive problems were laid bare. 2 goals in the first half were effectively the difference despite us battling in the second half. Next up it was the All Ireland champions in a game that in hindsight was decisive in us getting relegated. You can’t help but feel that the missed goal chances and inefficiency in front of goal V Tyrone were a huge reason why we went down.

It was time for the Dubs to finally come to Newbridge. The atmosphere was electric and we won our first division game since 2014. There was huge emotion in the stands and on the pitch afterwards, Dublin had 3 goal chances they should have converted as our defensive issues still were evident…it was back up north to play Armagh and reunite with Mr McGeeney. In truth it was a poor performance on a dire day for football. We easily swept Monaghan aside in Newbridge a week later in a super footballing display. We were efficient and ruthless in front of goal. It felt like we were going in the right direction. Our last game of the league saw us venture out west to Carrick on Shannon to play Mayo. It was clear, Win and we would restore our division 1 status. It was a sun drenched day and unfortunately we came up short. Our defensive issues were evident yet again as Mayo cut through us at ease. Major changes were needed for the championship.

Mickey Harte’s resurgent Louth provided the opposition in the Leinster quarter final. In truth, we never looked in danger and cruised through with ease. Our defensive issues once again reared their ugly head the next day out V Westmeath. A average division 3 team cut through us time and time again, scoring 2-15 in the process. In the Leinster final Dublin ruthlessly took 5 goal chances and hammered us. The management team had numerous warnings about our defence, but obviously didn’t learn from it.

Ultimately I enjoyed watching us compete in division 1 despite the relegation. But, we didn’t learn our lessons and had a pretty poor championship. We only beat two division 3 teams, while coming up short against division 1 teams. We lost a game against Mayo we really should have won. What will management have learnt from this year?

2/10. Very poor. Management suspect tactically. Fitness looks miles off. Players still making the same errors under pressure.

No further along than last year's mess.

A bit harsh Rex, yes on the face of it, relegation and a hammering in the Leinster final, but year one is done, next year will be defining for the management team, I think if we dig below the surface there might be a reason to be more optimistic

Agree with Rex - today was papering over cracks. There are far deeper problems with management’s tactical approach & don’t see it improving much next year.

Surely the door is open for a few of the U20's to be included early next year. Definitely 4 or 5 would be good enough imo.

Kildare98 wrote:

Agree with Rex - today was papering over cracks. There are far deeper problems with management’s tactical approach & don’t see it improving much next year.

agree the alarms bells ringing on weakness in our defence from frist half in ballybofey on February 5 took them 11 June to really make changes

Rex wrote:

2/10. Very poor. Management suspect tactically. Fitness looks miles off. Players still making the same errors under pressure.

No further along than last year's mess.

Jesus 2/10 is ridiculously harsh I'm my opinion
I understand the frustration but it's not like we can't improve and let's be fair if we had of stayed up in div 1 there wouldn't be as much frustration. The positives of the year in div 1 is we can compete with these top teams. I understand our defence is a bit
Suspect at times which i personally feel the centre back position was a huge weakness we had.
Not playing an experienced classy footballer like David Hyland all year round was very amusing to me. I do belive we have a good full back line tbh we get cut open threw the half back line with runners We can definitely tighten that up. Also its weird to say but are forwards had some great games this year but my god our shooting in games this year has been terrible in my opinion missing easy shots, frees and taking on stupid shots. But also the big thing we need to improve on is GOALS we don't score goals.
Jimmy Hyland has a few this year but we never look like scoring a goal but also when we do create big goal chances we don't take them. The good thing is these are things that can be improved on easily.
Also i think not playing big players like Hyland, Conway and Neil fylnn all year was a big mistake in my opinion. There big players for us with experience and we saw that Saturday night against mayo all 3 were fantastic. And if we played some of them in the league 1 or 2 results could of been different like that kerry game and Tyrone.
I have a funny feeling the 3 lads have been left out in the cold and possibly now there on the way out hopefully not.
Overall I'm excited for next year the management would of learned a huge amount and the players to.
Massive year ahead next year

Conway and Neil had injuries during the league, that’s why they had limited game time.

Big T wrote:

Rex wrote:

2/10. Very poor. Management suspect tactically. Fitness looks miles off. Players still making the same errors under pressure.

No further along than last year's mess.

Jesus 2/10 is ridiculously harsh I'm my opinion
I understand the frustration but it's not like we can't improve and let's be fair if we had of stayed up in div 1 there wouldn't be as much frustration. The positives of the year in div 1 is we can compete with these top teams. I understand our defence is a bit
Suspect at times which i personally feel the centre back position was a huge weakness we had.
Not playing an experienced classy footballer like David Hyland all year round was very amusing to me. I do belive we have a good full back line tbh we get cut open threw the half back line with runners We can definitely tighten that up. Also its weird to say but are forwards had some great games this year but my god our shooting in games this year has been terrible in my opinion missing easy shots, frees and taking on stupid shots. But also the big thing we need to improve on is GOALS we don't score goals.
Jimmy Hyland has a few this year but we never look like scoring a goal but also when we do create big goal chances we don't take them. The good thing is these are things that can be improved on easily.
Also i think not playing big players like Hyland, Conway and Neil fylnn all year was a big mistake in my opinion. There big players for us with experience and we saw that Saturday night against mayo all 3 were fantastic. And if we played some of them in the league 1 or 2 results could of been different like that kerry game and Tyrone.
I have a funny feeling the 3 lads have been left out in the cold and possibly now there on the way out hopefully not.
Overall I'm excited for next year the management would of learned a huge amount and the players to.
Massive year ahead next year

You are not really convincing me I'm too far out. We got relegated, we scraped by Westmeath, got pumped hard by Dublin and lost to an over the hill Mayo team who were mike's off the pace. Management was found to be tactically naive and the players faded badly all year in the big games.

However harsh it seems, I'll stick to my initial thoughts.

1. Kerry
2. Dublin
3. Galway
4. Derry
5. Donegal
6. Mayo

I think it safe to say we are somewhere in the 7 to 12 group with maybe Armagh, Roscommon, Cork, Tyrone and Clare.

On that basis I would give a 7/10 for 2022, hopefully moving to an 8 or 9 in 2023.

We can't keep pretending to be somewhere that we are not.

If you think we are on for a 8 or 9 in 2023 i would expect a. Leinster title or a narrow loss. ZERO chamce of that happening

Botch wrote:

If you think we are on for a 8 or 9 in 2023 i would expect a. Leinster title or a narrow loss. ZERO chamce of that happening

No, I mean an 8 or 9 would be moving into the top 6, I'm being realistic as to where we are at present combined with 2 Leinster titles in 66 years.

For some reason some people assume we have a right to be in the top 6 teams in the country based on hearsay

Yeah we have to earn the right to compete. I was hoping we could stay in divison 1 as i def feel it helps. And we were unlucky not to.

The league has it a role to play but GAA is all about the championship, both club and inter county.

On the year to date I would put the current top 12

1. Kerry
2. Dublin
3. Galway
4. Armagh
5. Derry
6. Mayo
7. Tyrone
8. Monaghan
9. Clare
10. Roscommon
11. Donegal
12. Kildare

So for me - Division 2 is the place for us to be at the moment. There are lots of teams that we need to start beating ‘consistently’ to get into the top 5 or 6.

Look forward to the comments - I’m sure everyone will agree with my ranking

Armagh are 3 with a gap to the rest. The rest are all within a couple of points if each other. Numbering pointless.

2/10 will ya give it a rest. Jesus you must give minus marks for a lot of years if you've been following Kildare for more than a wet week.
Competitive in Division 1, unlucky to go down. I and most people thought we wouldnt win a game in Div1 and would ship some heavy defeats. We were very very lucky to go up in 2021 remember.
Beat Dublin for the first time in 22 years?
Monaghan, Louth performances top drawer.
Blooded a lot of young players.
Recovered well from Leinster Final and played better than most thought possible against Mayo, AI finalists last 2 years.
You wont get miracles after Year 1. Everyone lauding Armagh (rightly) now but how long is McGeeney there? How many setbacks have they had to get there.

10/10 for me would have been winning leinster and retaining div 1 status so im giving it 6/10

minus 1 for relegation.
minus 1 for the leinster final drubbing.
minus 1 for management selections and naivety with how they approached games.
minus 1 for lack of conditioning. We were fading in games.

BearintheSquare wrote:

10/10 for me would have been winning leinster and retaining div 1 status so im giving it 6/10

minus 1 for relegation.
minus 1 for the leinster final drubbing.
minus 1 for management selections and naivety with how they approached games.
minus 1 for lack of conditioning. We were fading in games.

management took seriously but Kildare playing caught up on big teams was not done properly by other management

plus big teams have full time strength and conditioning coach in place for years with we don’t

I think Bears assessment is fair.

The lows were atrocious, Leinster final hammering and calamity set up are terrible marks against management...

But...

Beating Dublin in a meaningful game (may have been more meaningful for us than them but so be it) was the most important result in a long time.

We got relegated by the last kick of the game from monaghan remember and we had not won a game in div 1 in 8 years while blooding lots of new players.

Mayo have only lost to a non all ireland winning team (us in newbridge or nowehre) in the past 7?ish years.... We pushed them damn close despite an off the cuff hastily put together double sweeper system.

6/10 for me too seems about right.

Its year one remember...

It all started on a cold January Saturday in Newbridge V Westmeath :

When you think of it, not even the middle of June and its over,

But at least, roll on the club championship,

2/10 seems way harsh Rex ... I get the frustration after the Dublin result and even how the mao game ended but there were some positives from the year.

Yes, somewhere around 6/10 for me too, as someone referenced earlier this is year one

lilysavage wrote:

2/10 will ya give it a rest. Jesus you must give minus marks for a lot of years if you've been following Kildare for more than a wet week.
Competitive in Division 1, unlucky to go down. I and most people thought we wouldnt win a game in Div1 and would ship some heavy defeats. We were very very lucky to go up in 2021 remember.
Beat Dublin for the first time in 22 years?
Monaghan, Louth performances top drawer.
Blooded a lot of young players.
Recovered well from Leinster Final and played better than most thought possible against Mayo, AI finalists last 2 years.
You wont get miracles after Year 1. Everyone lauding Armagh (rightly) now but how long is McGeeney there? How many setbacks have they had to get there.

Absolutely you'd give us minus marks for some of the dross years we've had. You'd be very naive not to.

It's a typical attitude of Kildare GAA to accept being unlucky nearly men or claiming a moral victory that has us in this never ending circle of mediocrity. Another bad loss and everyone shurgs and consoles themselves we beat Dublin in the league in February.

We achieved the grand total of nothing this year, absolutely nothing. We are worse off because we are back in Div 2. 
We spent 8 months trying to play a way a child could see was wrong, then tried to change it completely in 10 days after another humiliation. Got to a situation where we had a great chance of winning, then folded like a deck of cards for the umpteenth time.

You can convince yourself that we had a decent year and all will be ok. I prefer to stick to reality and look what we really achieved.

Players blooded this year and will be around for the seasons to come:

1: Aaron O’Neill.
2: Darragh Ryan.
3: Tony Archbold.
4: Jack Sargent.
5: Kev O’Callaghan.
6: Paddy Woodgate.

Players who have developed this year:

1: Shea Ryan at fullback.
2: Darragh Kirwan in the ff line.

Players who came back into the reckoning after injuries/loss of form:

1: Ryan Houlihan.
2: Davy Hyland.
3: Fergal Conway.
4: Neil Flynn.

More to come:

1: Aaron Masterson. There’s a place for him in this team whether as a starter or finisher.
2: A number of the U20 squad.
3: Eoin Doyle, if he commits. I hope he does.

Plenty to work with there for the next few years. It’s not all negative. We’ve a system to develop on. If the team learn from the mistakes made this year as well as the things we did correctly. If Glenn and co. can develop as a management team and not be afraid to pull others into the management set up if requires. If the county board can develop a buzz around the team and draw more supporters back (that’s the least likely to happen as I believe they’re useless), we can hope for better days for the “Bit o’white”

Bring back the snake!

Ah but Rex depends on your perspective on "achievement"....

Its not always 2/10 or 10/10 ... Most of the time the answers are somewhere in the middle.

The Dublin performance and set up was without doubt atrocious and a MASSIVE black mark against players but mainly management. The fact that we all saw the warning signs make it all the worse and really undermine everything that was done... BUT...

The margins are so so small.... Hypothetical question of course, but lets assume monaghn missed that fee kick against Dublin.. We would have stayed up in Division 1.

Would you still be marking 2/10 or raised your rating... Im curious to know ?

I say this because for me we had some awful performances in the league (Mayo and Donegal in particular), some throwaways (Tyrone) but then a few of the best days we have had in many a year (Dublin, Monaghan and even Kerry)...

For me i expected relegation but hoped we would have been competitive , we got relegation and were unlucky in the end not to stay up.... I expected a leinster final, we got that... I expected an improved performacne against Dublin , big L here.... I hoped we would be competitve and push the good teams in the qualifiers, we did that although the manner of it allows for old failings to crop up.

I just dont think you can sweepingly say we achieved the grand total of nothing. There can only be 1 all ireland winner