The Supporter - Kildare Nationalist.

Quote :

It was hard to escape the feeling of deja vu as we bowed out of the championship in familiar fashion on Saturday.

Sure there was plenty of heart and determination in the Kildare display but that’s the least you’d expect from a team playing at home with their season on the line. Our performance was no better than any of our other three displays in this year’s championship and the most disappointing thing about it is that we have not progressed since we stumbled past Offaly.

The hope was that, with each passing game, our younger players would get more comfortable at this level but the experience has left them looking drained. Apart from a brief spell after half-time, we didn’t look or act like a team flush with youth. As a result, an experienced Tyrone side beat us at their leisure.

Losing by two points would have been no great shame but we should have lost by more. Tyrone are a better team than us at present and they have a more settled side. We are a dolly mixture of talents, none of whom look ripe for championship battle. You can count on one hand the number of players that have had a campaign they can be happy with. Even the results, bad as they have been, have largely been illusory. Our two-point defeat to Tyrone was far worse than the scoreline suggested, in much the same way the final scoreline against Dublin didn’t paint the full picture. There are problems in the side and on the line that won’t be resolved so long as the status quo remains. Kildare have lost their way to a worrying degree and it’s clear from this year’s campaign that a fresh and new approach is required.

In previous campaigns the team have been able to put bad displays behind them and rebuild through the Qualifiers but you cannot build something without solid foundations. We have fallen short over the last two seasons, not because of bad luck or poor refereeing, but because the fundamentals aren’t right. Saturday night’s game exposed all the flaws and like lifting a rock, it wasn’t a pleasant sight underneath.

It has been like looking at Kildare before McGeeney arrived in this year’s championship. The players look tired, physically and mentally. It was evident throughout the first half against Tyrone when one simple mistake after another made a senior inter-county team look like a team playing the game for the first time. Confidence can’t be that high at the moment but the lack of it can’t simply explain why we’re so bad at the basics. You do not do everything right in training only to continually make a mess of things come match day. Either the players are doing the wrong kind of training or they’re not being stress-tested by the management.

Kildare must have been bad at the basics in training because in four championship games they have been bad at them. Their shooting must have been bad in training because in four championship games their shooting has been bad. Either the team management couldn’t see with their own eyes in training or else they were looking at something else.

We hear so much about training and preparation nowadays that you wonder at times if teams have forgotten about the most important ingredient in any side, their ability to play football. In order to win championships, you must win games and in order to win games you must score more than the opposition. Strip it down and football seems simple. We seem to have complicated things to the extent that everyone involved with the Kildare team are confused.

How many times on Saturday night against Tyrone did a Kildare player look uncertain on the ball? A lot of the time, the Kildare players looked uncertain before they ever got the ball. At one stage in the first half, Eamonn Callaghan delayed so long over a free that the referee threw the ball in. It was a sad sight, watching an experienced player look so helpless in the heat of battle. There was nothing riding on the free, he was far from goal and simply looking to get the game restarted. If the players can’t handle a decision like that then they’re in big trouble.

On the sideline, the decision-makers didn’t fare much better. Having begun the game with Daniel Flynn, an attack-minded midfielder, playing in a defensive role the management decided to replace him with an attack-minded attacker, Paul Cribbin. The phrase square pegs and round holes came to mind. It didn’t stack up and it didn’t work but it wasn’t McGeeney’s worst move of the night.

He had already made that one, opting to play without a sweeper in front of his full-back line. We needed to be competitive instead we were complicit in Tyrone taking a commanding lead. It was depressing to watch.

We performed so poorly and set up so naively in the first half that it would have taken a minor miracle to turn things around half-time. We are not so bad that we should have to rely on miracles to compete in games but that is where we are at. Against Dublin we enjoyed a miraculous start and even that wasn’t enough to lay a glove on them. And when we went to the well against Tyrone, we found that there wasn’t much water.

We have been running on fumes in this year’s championship and and we have only briefly spluttered into life. We are better than what we have produced and we are better than what we have seen in the last two years. Kieran McGeeney’s time with Kildare has come full circle. He began with a bad hand and got the most from them but presented with good, raw material he lacks a vision for his side. Creatively and tactically Kildare have been out of their depth for two years and in his six years at the helm, those are the areas in which Kieran McGeeney has been found wanting.

He has done a lot for Kildare football but what we now need as a county he does not yet have. He may do one day but that day is too far away for a county in a hurry.

I would like to ask Brendan Coffey does he believe this is a true reflection of a Supporters view on Kildare at moment because I don' believe it is.

I would like to believe the average Kildare supporter is far more clued in on Football than what is portrayed in the above piece.

Absolutely pathetic, not because of his opinion on McGeeney but because of the baseless points made.

Pathetic.

Pathetic because it doesn't tally with your opinion Walter/Tim/Fionn?

I'm a Kildare supporter and I agree with pretty much all of it.

I'd have to agree with the whole thing too. How can you say the points are baseless Walter? The article is very comprehensive and he reinforces every point. Your posts are irritating to say the least in how tunnel visioned you are.

WW I usually agree with a fair bit of what you say but I can't see much wrong in what has been said there. Whoever wrote it is entitled to say what they think and for me they have summed up a great deal of our issues over the last season and a half.

If they want McGeeney to go then that's their call it probably wouldn't be mine yet. The only thing I would be disappointed with is that they never offered an alternative or successor. Maybe that's for another day.

Walter I think the point is proven in the thread - it's just one view and like all views, some will agree (Sam, Westside) and some, like yourself, won't.

Have to say that the article is spot on in many areas particularly our first half display and our overall displays over the last 2 seasons. Something has gone serioulsy wrong with the whole set up starting with the game against Meath last year. I dont know what or what caused it or who is responsible but we are a pale shadow of the team that lit up the championship in 10 and 11. Maybe the Donegal defeat knocked the stuffing out of them or it was the wretched bad luck they endured it those years.
Is it the last 2 paragraphs saying that McGeeney should go that really annoys you Walter? Or do you really disagree with all the points in the rest of the article?

Whilst I found it hard reading and washing our dirty linen in public I don't have an issue with the content. If McGeeney is to stay I would like to see his vision for the future and how he proposes to get there.

You want to see his vision for the future. What are you talking about!

It's hard to argue with the article. I think it sums up well the problems we had on Saturday and in the championship over the last 2 years.

I'd still be in favour of keeping McGeeney but would like changes in the back room team to freshen things up.

I don't see a whole lot wrong with it. It's one man's opinion just like everyone on a terrace, in a pub or on a forum like this.

athytillidie wrote:

You want to see his vision for the future. What are you talking about!

 
In simple english for you I want to see his plan i.e. Leinster title 2014/2015?, All-Ireland semi 2014/2015?, maintain Div 1 status, take on a forwards coach etc

Rex wrote:

If they want McGeeney to go then that's their call it probably wouldn't be mine yet. The only thing I would be disappointed with is that they never offered an alternative or successor. Maybe that's for another day.

That's a major point I'd take issue with.

Secondly he expected the younger lads on the panel to suddenly click after 3/4 games in one season, each game against different opposition under a different set of circumstances.

He mentioned the sense of deja vu. 1998/2000 aside you could say the same about the last 90 odd years in Kildare.

He questioned the substitution of Dan Flynn, even though it was forced upon management due to injury.

I believe he danced around a lot of points and addressing none of them. We could all easily do that and write for a paper.

Whether I disagree them or not is irrelevant.

Hard to disagree with any of that article, the comments that are in it are fairly close to the bone and spot on IMO.......

The article seems to reflect most people's opinions on here so it holds more weight.

Every manager will have a good vision for where they want to go but it comes down to performance. I'm sure the vision hasnt changed since McGeeney has come in but the results unfortunately are not there.

Dan Flynn's substitution was more to do with the fact that Mattie Donnelly was the most influential player on the field while Dan Flynn was on him, the injury was irrelevant as the change had to be made.

overthebar wrote:

Hard to disagree with any of that article, the comments that are in it are fairly close to the bone and spot on IMO.......  

How is he spot on in his assertion that their kicking must have been bad in training, and that the management must have missed it.

You have Kieren McGeeney and Jason Ryan at these training sessions along with Damien Hendy. 2 very well respected Coaches in GAA. Is he suggesting that both of these lads were playing Candy Crush whilst Eoghan Flats and Johnny kicked wides and dropped balls short over in Hawkfield.

Baseless claims lads. He is entitled to his opinion but to suggest the effort wasn't put in on the training pitches is pathetic. They had Ronan O'Gara down last year talking to lads about their kicking technique. If anything its being over analysed.

I had more of an issue with what was written after the Dublin game. There was a whole article devoted to McGeeney out. Not a word on players performance or even the match itself.

i agree with most of that article and would dearley love to see kildare play the way they were in 2010 great going forward in waves and defending in numbers maybe this is a mortal sin but would banty be a choice to manage and shake things he would love to put one over on meath as well

Moatesport I actually hope for your sake your Joking about banty  

Not complaining about article, everyone entitled to their choice but just on MoateSports comments, do you not realise you can't just keep playing the same way when you are completely changing the personnel on the team, it takes time, just as it took two years to get to play the way we were in 2010

thats fine if we could get back to that level i have no problem with that maybe management team need to start telling the fans of kildare what the expections and targets are for each year ahead and really get everybody on board

What team anywhere does that? Grimley in Armagh tried to do it earlier in the year and got laughed at.

I think we know enough to know what the expectations and targets are, but it wouldn't make a difference if they didn't tally with the supporters. It's mad comparing now to 2010 on a whole host of levels.

Also, Darryl Flynn hasn't been an attacking midfielder at inter-county level, probably at any stage as a senior, as Dermot was that man. He was a prodigious scorer from the middle as an U21 but it isn't this year his role suddenly changed.

And playing attack-minded Paul Cribbin in defence - no-one had a problem with Emmet Bolton in that role for the best part of the last seven or eight years.

The statement about the management not seeing lads missing in training is a bit strange to be honest... I recall the latest GAA managerial saint, St Malachy in Croke Park after his Fermanagh side had lost to Kildare. I remember him utterly bemused and declaring his feeling of helplessness as his players kicked a clatter of calamitous wides, many of them inside 30m. Fermanagh had kicked the Ulster final away and he revealed that they had worked specifically on it, laboriously, ever since. In similar vein, McGeeney said - after Kildare beat Louth and in reference to the Dublin game - "it's not like we're kicking in big, high balls to the full-forward line in training" (paraphrased). This is such a new team, with a very high percentage of it having gotten a serious eye-opener as regards the rigours of the inter-county game.

They're my three big issues with the article and the rest is just opinion. And a lad is as entitled to that as I am, and I'll defend his/her right to express it.

And I know this is from another thread but I'm really trying to stay away as I'm weary of repeating myself and coming across as even more of a cheerleader (now that I've turned Tommy, I was letting him lead the way the last week). When people talk about guys that SHOULD be in the squad... talking about club form as a barometer by which you can measure a guy definitely making it at inter-county level is like saying Jason Smyth would make the Olympic 100m final. You're not comparing like with like. The club form will get him noticed. It's what he does when he goes in that counts after that.

Ye've all heard the term 'best club footballer in the county'... have you ever known it to be an inter-county player?

He also says we are better than what we have produced and seen in the last 2 years.

What he fails to mention is That McGeeney is the one that has raised the bar to this level.

Last year was a dip in the upward curve of Kildare, but comparing this year with last year is like comparing the Manchester Untied team of 1999 to the team of 2013.

My own opinion on McGeeney for what it is worth.

I genuinely cannot get my head around anyone calling for McGeeney to go. He has introduced a clatter of new players, reached a Division 1 League Semi Final and won the Leinster Final with the u21's in one season. The Juniors are in an All Ireland final and the minors and All Ireland 1/4 final.
Kildare football is on an upward curve and lads want to cull the man who has been the driving force behind the whole thing.

Walter take off the rose tinted glasses for a second. Do you see any fault at all with how McGeeney has set up the team or generally managed the team? I'm a McGeeney fan but I can see what other posters are saying when it comes to his apparent flaws.

I would say we should have beaten Tyrone in the league semi, our under 21s should have won the all Ireland (Podge getting taken off was very strange just after scoring one and setting up another) and the junior and minor teams are down to other management teams.

What have the bloody Minors got to do with Mc Geeney ? Helsenberg, or sorry Walter.. and He left an AI behind with the 21s.. If were being really honest. Jz you wont listen to any bad about the Man will you..