Minors 2023

Focusing on underage again in the hope it’s a bit a positive thing to look forward too over the next few weeks. Drawn in Group 1 in Leinster with Laois, Offaly and Longford. Dublin and Meath drawn with each other in Group 2 along with Louth and Westmeath, and Carlow, Wexford and Wicklow in the 3 team group.

5th April home to Offaly
12th April away to Longford
26th April away to Laois

On the face of it you’d say avoiding Dublin and Meath is a good draw, Offaly have had our number the odd time in recent years at underage but it’s always going to be hard to predict I suppose.

Top in Group 1 and 2 goes straight into the semi finals, 2nd place in 1 and 2 go into the quarter finals and 3rd in 1 and 2 goes into the preliminary quarter finals along with 1st and 2nd from Group 3. Could have made it more complicated somehow maybe.

Squad is below, looks like Ben Ryan (captain) and Joey Cunningham are the only 2 survivors from last years squad.

Adam Fitzpatrick – Clane
Alex Lenehan – Naas
Alex Tilly – Maynooth
Aodán Jordan – Confey
Ben Ryan – Round Towers
Cathal Moore – Sarsfields
Charlie White – Ballykelly
Cian Keaveny – Athy
Cian McGrath – Sallins
Colm Moran – Athy
Daniel Colbert – Clane
Dara Cooke – Raheens
Darragh Mullahy – Clane
Donnchadh Kinch – Castledermot
Elias Dlhos – Naas
Eoghan Dunne – Athgarvan
Evan Boyle – Carbury
Evan Donnelly – Ellistown
Harry Redmond – Sarsfields
Jack Butler – Moorefield
Jack McCabe – Castlemitchell
James Donnelly – Larries
Joey Cunningham – Allenwood
Josh Flood – Maynooth
Liam Kelly – Miltown
Liam O’Connor – Naas
Michael Chambers – Maynooth
Oisin Loughan – Naas
Paul O’Dea – Maynooth
Pierce O’Dwyer – Larries
Rob Murray – Naas
Ronan Kelly – Athy
Ruaidhri Lawler – Larries
Senan Murphy – Larries
Tadhg Donlon – Round Towers

Good win to start the campaign tonight with a 6 point win in the end over Offaly in Hawkfield. Led pretty much the whole way throughout with 2 goals in the first 20 minutes almost killing the game off early on. Offaly got it back to 2 points midway through the 2nd half before a Jack McCabe goal made the last 10 minutes a bit more comfortable.

Away to Longford next week and with them losing tonight by 13 in Portlaoise you'd imagine we should be favourites to win that one as well.

There was a great crowd at the match last night despite the poor weather.

On a side note I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few people still trying to dig their cars out of the muck this morning. It puts paid to any notion that any senior matches will be played at our “centre of excellence” while Conleths is being done up.

On that note I seen during the week O' Moore park been upgraded too. Will this impact Kildare games been potentially based there?

Not a word about the minors last night. Another good win. Excellent 2nd half which saw them beat Laois well. Into the semi finals now in four weeks.

3 good wins so far to be fair to them. Good spread of scorers as well which is great to see. Really stepped it up in the second half last night after being a point down at half time.

Straight through to the semi finals now after topping the group, which means no games for 4 weeks. Hopefully whatever team that comes through the prelims and quarter finals doesn’t have too much momentum behind them by the time that comes around. Dublin topped their group as well so they’re also straight through to the semis which means we can’t meet them till the final at least.

So Meath it is next Wednesday in the semi final, throw in at 19:30 in Hawkfield so nice to have home advantage.

Meath beat Westmeath by 6, Louth by 5 and lost to Dublin by 4 in the group stage, and scored 3-10 in the 2nd half away to Wexford last night to win by 9 after being 7 points down at half time.

Offaly beat Louth last night with a last minute winner and will have home advantage against Dublin in the other semi final.

Encouraging performance from the minors tonight beating Meath by a point

Level at half time after a first half that was almost point for point with neither team building any sort of lead. Led by 3 heading into the final few minutes and managed to hold on to win 13-12 in the end.

Joey Cunningham has been particularly impressive so far this year and chipped in with another 4 points tonight as well.

Play Dublin in the final next week after they hammered Offaly tonight by 20 odd points. Sounds as if that game was over very early on with Dublin scoring 2 goals in the opening few minutes. Chances are that game will be in Portlaoise again.

Well done to all involved, great to be back in a Leinster final with another 2 games guaranteed. Hopefully able to go one step further than last year.

Good performance tonight and nice to see a decent crowd in Hawkfield. Really impressed with number 11 Redmond and Cunningham was stand out again. Best of luck in the final V the Dubs.

Great to get the result and great to have a final to look forward to. What are the chances of the minor final being played before the senior game in Kilkenny?

Posted over on other thread as forgot their was minor specific so shall copy and paste.

Kildare 0-13 Meath 0-12 in the minor semi-final. Probably a bit lucky as Meath missed two open goals in the last quarter and probably could/should have had about 3-3 down the stretch, but them's the breaks. We'll take it against a better Royal underage team than usual, with some big lumps of lads.

Will need to be a lot tighter after Dublin went down to Tullamore and put 6-15 (to 1-Cool on Offaly and were clinical, but for another day. Most importantly into that decider as well as the last eight of All Ireland.

Well done.

To be fair to Meath they won Leinster minor titles in 2018, 2020 and 2021 along with the All Ireland in 2021.

They had a disaster of a year last year alright but they've a better pedigree than most at this level over the last few years.

Their inability to transfer this to U20 has been pretty shocking all the same.

Based on nothing other than them beating Offaly and Meath by more than we managed you'd imagine Dublin will be favourites for the final. Galway v Mayo in the Connacht final, Cork v Kerry in Munster and Derry v Monaghan in Ulster - hard to tell who you'd prefer in the All Ireland series from that lot to be honest.

The lads did really well last night against a Meath team that not only had a couple of huge lads but also the smaller lads were rapid. The number 13 was uncatchable when he started running with the ball but the full back line did well just to stand their ground when he came flying in. Ben Ryan a huge loss last night and I think he is out for the season with an ACL injury. We have a couple of big lads ourselves and Mick O'Dwyers grandson is a good target man should it come to that. I'd have young Cunningham at 11 as that's where he does the most damage!

What’s the thoughts on tomorrow nights final ?
Another big night for kildare football
From what I’m hearing it’s a strong Dublin side

Yeah a very strong Dublin team by all accounts

Good luck tonight lads!!

Good luck to our minors tonight….Cill Dara Abu!!

Dublin by far the better but Jesus christ that ref , he must have dublin parents , one useless inept prick

Someone must have got at him at half time he gave us a few frees in 2nd half

Agreed, Dublin bigger, stranger, fitter, the effort from the Kildare lads was very good, but the referee had a shocker, often wonder do referees look back on a recording of the match and appraise their own performance, if so he won't want to see that again

Very brave second half performance against a very athletic Dublin when it looked as if we could have been beaten out the gate at halftime. Definitely something to build on there.

One area we can really improve is our kick-out strategy. Dublin seemed to win about 90% of our kick-outs when we went long. It was only when we went short at the end did we win a few. Our keeper is great at the long range frees. He got a couple that our senior team mightn’t get!

We played well in patches, hard to complain though with 19 scores against 10 scores.  

To be fair during different periods of the game I thought the referee did both teams no favours but overall I thought he was fair enough.

Hard luck to Kildare but still there with a chance of all Ireland which I think the gobshite that presented the cup Leinster Chairman I presume saying he hoped Dublin would go on and win the all Ireland did he not know that Kildare are still in the competition

Kerry beat Cork in Munster Final tonight so .........


Kildare v Kerry

Saturday 10th June in UPMC Nowlan Park

Dublin beat Cork 1-18 to 2-12 having been down 2-12 to 0-12 with 18 minutes left. Dublin scored winning goal 5 minutes into injury time.


Kildare/Kerry now on TG4 on their YouTube channel