Kildare team v Derry

Agree with first two especially Sam. Just can't afford to be missing frees and too reliant on JD.
Confidence no where like last year but I think Smith would improve things in the forwards as he's a real livewire and draws defenders freeing up the other guys a bit.

Saw you and Sam senior wearing lovely new polo shirts last saturday evening....bet all the family have them....

smith wud improve things massively,is always a threat!!!!
goal threat is always there with him to,cant see the team being changed though??

Been very impressed with Kelly since coming in as he seems to be a real defender and gets a good tackle in - away to Derry is about as big a test as he will encounter as their inside forwards are their strenght and do most of their scoring. The improvement out the field with Callaghan dropping deep seems to also have helped make us look more secure through the middle and stop good balls going in to the forwards. Hopefully this will continue against Derry as they haven't been putting up big scores.
I think O'Conor is a good option off the bench. Having a big man on from the start I think distracts players from playing the smart ball to get the score and then just lump a high ball in too quickly when it's not on. Think we're getting a good pattern of play going recently without the long ball so would like to see that continue. Would be great to see Smyth back not sure he'll be fully fit so maybe best as an option off the bench too.

cant believe what i`m reading here jimmers is one of our best forwards and saying he can`t win a 50/50 ball is ridiculous to beyond the point of belief on numerous occasions i`ve seem him clean the ball out of the air with 2 opponents jumping and punching the ball to no success.
He barely waisted a ball on saturday in the dirtiest championship evening you will get and to suggest that o`connor will heel wastfull possession is mad count how many balls were kicked into him on saturday and we only got one score out of the lot which he needed kavanaghs help to finish off.
I`m not giving out about o`connor i like him but not for jimmers he is one of the first on the team sheet in my view maybe if he came in for roli i wouldn`t mind so much

i wish you all the best of luck ,the lillies are improving and will surprise alot , as for my crowd we are on a downward slope against armagh , we are "rubber ducked" d , i can see the lillies making progress through the back door and if the run goes smoothly you never know

Good man Vodafone, you snook in under the radar. Thanks for the good wishes.
Hopefully the Dubs and the Lilywhites meet at a later stage in the championship. We owe you one for last year.

Best of Luck against the Armagh men, I'll only be watching if we win in the afternoon, if not I'll be confined to a dark room for a few hours.

Having talked to a Carlow man about their encounter with Derry, he said that only reason Derry won was that they won the midfield battle and the won it comfortably.

Carlow had 2 men sent off in the game, were missing Brendan Murphy through suspension but still managed 2-09 against Derry and were only a point down at half time 1-07 to 1-08.

Only lost by 6points in the end.

Derry scored 1-18, 0-10 of which from free's. So they are no world beaters and are far from it.
The lads should certainly not fear them, lets go up there and make up for our previous losses.

peile wrote:

Agree with first two especially Sam. Just can't afford to be missing frees and too reliant on JD.
Confidence no where like last year but I think Smith would improve things in the forwards as he's a real livewire and draws defenders freeing up the other guys a bit.

Saw you and Sam senior wearing lovely new polo shirts last saturday evening....bet all the family have them....

Not biting!

hahahahahahaha!!!!

The reason we haven't been using a left-footed freetaker is.... we don't have a left-footed freetaker

Johnny is a perfectly good free taker but he needs to change to kicking all frees from the hand.
Every free taker in the country is gaining at least 5 yards and bettering his angle taking frees from the hand, whereas our man kicks them from the exact spot. Some pitches have a good sod for free taking some are firm short on grass making it difficult. Johnny is the most accurate man we have from hand and should kick out of hand.

maybe he will this week !!!!
hopefully he is on form with them

Course he will, bet he's knocking them over for fun as we speak in training.

I agree Johnny is a good freetaker from the left but when kicking from the right side he generally uses his right foot and tries to hit the ball with the outside of his foot to curl it over, this is a very difficult thing to do. I think we can't afford to miss any of these frees and so should be sourcing a left footed free taker if we don't have one on the team. In fact I've seen Johnny kicking great points with his left foot from play so why does he not do so with the frees.
I agree also that kicking from the hand does give the taker an advantage as regards improving the angle of the kick.

Stood beside Tomas Connor's father at a club game in the SFC in Newbridge two years ago and he made the comment that Tomas was not a full forward,he was a centre field player.Here we go again ,how many club centre field players are we going to play as forwards.They are usually all right if the game is not close.Where chances are limited,the centre field player is more often or not happy to take a point where a goal was on.From now on Kildare will need to convert any goal chance the get as a point may not be good enough.I feel Monaghan will come back with a vengence in a bid to eradicate the bitter taste of their collapse last Sunday.We can not afford to play anything less than the full 70 minutes in order to succede.Despite our good win over Derry we are still prone to serious lapses at times.
Paulus

I must eat humble pie here as Johnny kicked a great point on Saturday from the right corner with his left foot. I'd like to see him do this in future whenever he takes a free from that area so I'll take back what I said about sourcing a leftfooted freetaker for these type of frees.