Clare v Kildare round 3B qualifer

Smith limped out of training Tuesday night - no idea how serious it is

Shit hope its not too bad.

white boy wrote:

.p.s h. Lynch should start in the middle of park

Before the championship started I said Hugh Lynch should be on and he would have made a big difference in the Meath game where in the first half we were pushed around in the midfield. If Clare are big in the centre and are on top I'm sure he'll come in.
As it is, it is a panel game now and the team picked looks good with a number of game changing options on the bench.

Maybe milltownmary is Jayson new Name ??

McGrillan is very lucky imo to hold His place..

Smithy might be better coming off the bench, and yes He has being doing well, but He has to start taking better decisions, and not just have a shoot on sight policy.. all imo of course.

Also think if Smithy is fit he is very unlucky not to start however it does give O'Flaherty another chance to prove himself. One of our better performers in the league but was poor last week.
Think we should have enough to win this but will have to get stuck in from the start.

Kildare by 5

Just told Smith was flying again in training last night : so it's all good

flourman wrote:

Just told Smith was flying again in training last night : so it's all good

Thanks flourman  

I have been told to expect two changes to that team, one in the backs and one in the forward line.

O'Grady for McGrillian and Smith for one of Flats or Leper I'd hope.
Subs have had a positive impact thus far : I'd expect the same influence from the likes of Eoin Doyle, TOC, Lynch.

Id suspect that Smith and O Grady will come in. I think Mcgrillen was on last chance saloon against Down and now maybe JR is keen to bring O Grady in. He seemed to really like O Grady even though he struggled at times. Will be interesting to see how he does.

I'm hoping Smith will start as well. He links well with Podge and I think Leper and Flats are more suited to the half-forward line. It will be interesting to see if O'Grady starts as people are suggesting. He hasn't been that convincing at times but seems to be a favourite of Jason Ryan.

Best of luck to all involved tomorrow. If our attitude is right from the start like it was against Down then we should be okay. Martin Carney just tipped Clare to win on the Last Word - hopefully he's got it wrong!

Best of luck to the lads tomorrow, hope were coming back from the long ass trip happy!

There are 2 changes to the team.OGrady for McGrillen and Smith for Flats
slowly getting close to the best team on the pitch.in my oponion just 2 or 3 more changes and we are well set

I wouldn't be so quick to drop McGrillen, I thought he looked really sharp in 1st half against Down, I know Coulter took him for a few scores but he was not to blame for all of them, Maybe O'Grady deserves his chance, but I wouldn't write off Hughie yet, I still think he has a lot to offer for this team, For me Smith is our most clinical and economic forward and is in great form and I hope he does start,

Looking forward to the game, Hope we have a good support, Cill Dara Abu

I'd tend to agree on the O'Grady/McGrillen question. I thought Hugh did well in the first half v Down and Coulter is a handful for any defender. I didn't think O'Grady did any better than McGrillen on him. The FB line is now very inexperienced with Fitz and O'Grady in there. We really miss P Kelly.

I'd agree Smith deserves a start and O'Flaherty can have no complaints given his form on Sunday last. It's going to be hard for Flats to change his season around as it must have been confidence-sapping to have lost his place in the first place and then to be tugged ashore against Down. Not good for the longer term as I'd still feel he is one of our best forwards when his confidence is up.

Can't figure out what's going on with P Cribbin - if he doesn't make the bench again tonight it certainly gives credence to a falling out of some sort unless he is just out of form.

Smith looks to have definitely done enough to earn a start. Fair enough he's making a great impact off the bench and yeah you need players capable of doing that, but if he's having a bigger impact on things than lads who are starting then surely he needs to be starting instead of them.

I'd be inclined to stick with McGrillen as well for this one. O'Grady has promise but he looks a bit raw at times, he just needs to try read things a bit better and instead of trying to go for every ball he needs to learn when to let a forward win a ball and then pressure him as soon as he does so. On Sunday there was a couple of times in the second half when he got caught out a bit and Coulter was nearly in on goal, I suppose that'll all come with experience though. As for the idea of moving Lyons out to the halfback line then it's certainly a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. With the likes of Bolton and both Cribbins available to play across the line it's already going to be pretty attacking minded, and without Kelly, Lyons is the best man marker we have. It makes very little sense to sacrifice that I feel.

The decisions made on the line last week worked out for us, Lepers black card was almost a blessing in disguise, hopefully though management don't just wait to make forced changes. If things aren't going our way then we've got plenty of strong options on the bench to shake it up a bit, especially with the likes of TOC and Lynch there.

We're coming off the back of an impressive win against Down, there's no reason not to be confident about getting a win again tonight.

Losing 7 to 4 at half time. Very poor and nervy performance

Putrid stuff. No spark. At one point only had Smith in attack versus 5 defenders while we had 5 men clustered around the ball in our own half. Big 35 minutes ahead for manager and players

Very lucky to win that. While we upped the pace and played more football than we did in the first half The fact that Clare tired probably had more to do with our win. I thought Tomas made a big impact in the forwards when he came on.Donnellan made one great save. We'll need to up things big time for the next match. Anyways onwards and upwards as they say.

Just happy to get the win. Kerry - a much better team than us - only won by four. Having said that, there were worrying signs of the Meath-style slump in the first half, and there were times when Fitzpatrick, Conway and Smith seemed to be playing them on their own. Anyway... We are two rounds further than I thought we would be. To put it mildly we are going to be underdogs against Donegal or Monaghan and that should help concentrate minds.

One thing, though - Ryan seems to have chosen this game to trial a more defensive system. Anyone know what this is about?! Maybe four or five months ago would have been the time! Anyway, well done to the lads on eking out a win, they showed some character if not exactly setting the world alight with their play.

Best of luck to the minors tomorrow, would be a nice double...

Maybe he's been reading the forum. We went from one extreme to the other though as I mentioned above. We struggled so much against Clare's (relatively) packed defence it's hard to see us making much headway against Donegal or Monaghan. But we're playing in August and gone one round further than last year with a young team. Just wish we could get some consistency of play and tactics. Fair play to Fergal Conway who was immense I thought with Smith and Fitz also doing well and subs did well also particularly Tomas (despite falling over when clean through!) and Flats (form temporary class permanent). The much maligned O'Neill gave his all for the jersey as ever. As for Leper I've never seen a player of his experience do so many stupid things on the ball but still helped pull us through with two trademark points in the second half.

I'd need a few stiff Jack Daniels before picking a side for next game.

With a county like ourselves, the performance is more important than the results as at this current moment in time we are not going to be competing for the big prizes, in order to get there we need to start deleviring a consistent high level of performance, what was on view tonight was well short of what is required, yes it is great to still be in the championship but if/when we go out of the championship we need it to be with a far better performance than we saw tonight or against Meath so that we have something to build upon to get us closer to target such as reaching and being competitive and possibly winning Leinster finals. If we go out with a performance like tonight or against Meath, next year we will be starting from a blank canvass again and trying to lay a foundation not build upon one!! Maybe I am being hyper negative and I apologise if that is the case but the level of performance I saw tonight and against Meath was not good enough.

Only context I'd put on that Topcat (and I was appalled by the performance as well) is that we have an extremely young side and it's hard to get consistency when that's the case. Apart from the u-21s from last year we're relying on inexperienced newcomers like Fitzpatrick, Cribbin and O'Grady in a very inexperienced back line. If it wasn't for the full back line and Conway we could have been dead and buried shortly after the restart.

To try to pluck some positives :

- for the second week in a row we had to dig in and show real guts when the game was going against us immediately after half time. Many's a Kildare team I've seen that would have kissed goodbye to the championship in the face of that adversity
- Conway, Fitz, Lyons, Smith, O'Flaherty all played well
- Subs worked
- we were clinical enough in those important last 25 minutes - just as we were against Down
- second clean sheet in a row
- the sun shone when we all probably saw the deluge around Moneygall on the way back!!

I won't go into the negatives just now - we all could see plenty and the majority of players (even those who came into the game in form) underperformed. Won't be anywhere near enough against Mon/Don particularly if in Croker ( I'd rather it wasn't)

I'm not sure whether Ryan is a tactical genius or so oblivious to what is going on in front of him that it's scary. Did he set out to tire Clare then run them into the ground or did he get extremely lucky that a few players bailed him out. I have a definite lean to one side there.

That first half was simply awful, depressing, naive, lacklustre and lucky that we were not out of the game.
Ryan should be thanking three players in particular tonight that he is still in a job. Fitzpatrick, Conway and Smith dragged us through that first 35 minutes.

I said last year when I saw Conway burst out of defence with four Longford players hanging out of him in the U21 final that he reminded me of Glen Ryan. Now he is not near that level, but he has the heart and will to get him near. For a young lad he stood up and was counted. As did Smith and Fitzpatrick both who played stormers to keep us in it.

Our subs made a big difference and Clare just did not have the squad to keep up the pace.
The come back did show guts and a will to fight but they should not be six points down with twenty to go against Claire.

Unless some lads get their fingers out and man up then Donegal or Monaghan will eat us for breakfast.

We are still in it though and you never know but our lives are running out.

I think we got out of jail tonight. We were completely outplayed for the first 45 minutes and Clare deserved to be 6 points up. It was very similar to the Meath match in that we were outplayed in the first half and hoped we'd see a response but things got worse at the start of the 2nd half. I think the difference tonight was that I thought the backs played well and kept us in it. Fitzy and Ollie pretty much kept their men quiet, Fergal Conway tried his heart out and to give credit where it's due - I thought Mick O'Grady did quite well. He's better suited to wing-back than full-back in my opinion. 

Of the midfielders and forwards, I thought Paidi O'Neill and Alan Smith were the only 2 players who held their own in the first 45 minutes. We just seemed lethargic and tired - similar to the Meath game. I thought Eoghan O'Flaherty was the main reason we turned it around. Apart from the 3 points he got, he has the football intelligence to pick the right option at the right time. I think Jason Ryan has to show faith in him to be our playmaker in the half forward line. In fairness to Leper who had a bit of a nightmare up to then, he got a couple of good scores at the end when we needed them.

A performance like that throws up more questions than answers. I don't think our midfield is good enough to compete for kick-outs that are kicked down the middle. Clare were able to win the kick-outs so easily, just as Dan Gordon and Meath were in previous games. I think Jason Ryan should have a re-think about Daryl Flynn but I'm not expecting it. Why were we so lethargic tonight and against Meath? Did we prepare differently or can we not handle being favourites? Also, some of our play in the first half was too bad to be true. Clare were playing a sweeper and we kept kicking the ball into him. Surely the better option was to run at their defence but we never seemed to adapt.

Finally, well done to the lads on digging out the result tonight and best of luck to the minors tomorrow. Cill Dara Abu.