Kildare V Antrim post match celebrations

Just on the way home, so I'll get this out of the way first, take that Mr.Bradley. You won't have to worry about the nasty people anymore. In Fact it's the Antrim County Board I'd be worried about.

Now, onto our boys. Well done to everyone of them. Superb second half performance, totally blew Antrim out of the water.

I'm not going to get into the ins and outs as it's not easy using a phone in a moving car (passenger btw), but Hugh and young Kelly were outstanding, Leper was back to his ball burglar best hoovering up the breaks. In fact everyone stood up tonight and slapped down their critics and put them back in their boxes.

To say I'm delighted is an understatement after the last 10 days or so.

We are right back in it again, roll on Saturday and Leitrim.

Great peformance by all. I have to say Hugh suprised me tonight,I never rated him highly but he has totally changed my opinions based on his last two peformances. Fair play to him.

I think Geezer has got a huge find in Kelly. The lad looks like he has been playing championship football for years. Excellent addition to the team.

Emmet Bolton looks better in the half back line,Daryl Flynn has been superb of late and special mentions for Leper,Sweeney and Morgan o Flats. No need to mention JD and Dermot because we can always depend on them

Well lads fantastic result in Belfast. Only the second match Antrim lost up there all year Tyrone being the other in
The championship.
The management and team need to be congratulated on a fine performance.
This result personally was our best under mcgeeney. Why?
Well take into account the circumstances, Dermot Earley snr , juniors injury, injuries to Conway,Kelly smith, Donnelly suspensions to jd, flats, David whyte has hampered our preparations all year.
Not to mention criticism that management and players received after being dumped out of Leinster by Louth, fair play because they picked themselves up off the tiles. I'm more happy for the bunch of players and management because they are the ones who put in the commitment and work.

Very impressive second half display there last night.

I think Sweeney deserves a lot of credit. He's after playing very well in two games. Flynn was quite good as well. We did very well on the breaks as well. Morgan and Leper in particular. Bolton is not a corner-back but he is a decent half-back and gets up well up to support the attack. I was also impressed with Peter Kelly and I'm generally happy with Hugh.

The forwards did well, nothing wrong with scoring 1-15. JD was quite good, 1-4 from play shows that although the only reason I'm saying he was excellent was due to the couple of missed frees. He made up for them though with his scores from play.

Dermot did well in at full forward and you could see before they moved him in that he was a bit slower than the other players around midfield so I think we can say that it was a good decision by McGeeney to move him in.

Just to mention as well, the few games have brought Leper on a lot and he looked like he was back to full match fitness and getting close to his best last night.

Great peformance in the second half. Peter Kelly is the find of the year so far and Eoghan O'Flaherty was also impressive especially in the first half. When we built a four point lead in the second half, it forced Antrim to abandon their defensive tactics and this opened up space for our forwards. I hope that Dermot is not too badly injured but with Leitrim up next we may not need him. I thought that David Whyte played well when he came on

that was some team talk at halftime

Great win, great performances all over the park. Bit of messing done in the 1st half with the wind but a completely different team the 2nd. Kildare support was disappointing. Pity poor Carlow they were robbed in injury time

Went into the mens after the match and briefly chatted to a chap I knew and there was this northern guy started chatting to me over me left shoulder about how the better team won etc, turned around and it was Gerry bloody Adams, "Good man Gerry how's she cuttin says I", disaster. You know in the film Braveheart when the boyos 1st meet William Wallace and they say thats not William Wallace, William Wallace is 7 feet tall etc felt like that meeting Gerry, he's a small scraney man..........

Ahh well roll on Leitrim!!!!!!!!!!!!

Great match and first time in ages they looked like a well gelled team, half time team talk worked a treat. 4 stars for me for the match were kelly, mc grillen, bolton and flynn. flynn really showing his talent this year.

Here's to next saturday..................................

Well done to the the whole team and all involved....a great win! starting to look more like the great team we all know they can be...looking forward to next week now

good luck to the minors this evening, hope we can make it an even better weekend for football in Kildare!!

Great performance all round, particularly in the second half. Going to the match I was confident that Kildare would do it as I reckoned that they would not kick as many wides again and there was no reason why they wouldn't win as much possession as last Saturday. However at half time I wasn't quite as confident as I felt the lads were wasting a lot of possession and were very static, not running into space to give the man with the ball a few options. I must say that all changed for the better in the second half with loads of movement off the ball and great scores. I thought moving Roli out to mid-field was a good move as Dermot was having trouble keeping up with his man. It would be difficult to pick out a man of the match but I would give it to one of the following - Hugh McGrillen, Eamonn Callaghan, Daryll Flynn, John Doyle and Emmet Bolton (if only for that run he made along the side line for nearly the full length of the pitch in the second half).
As for Antrim I thought they had just one Plan and that was to work the ball down to the right corner forward position where they could draw/manufacture a free for Riverdance Cunningham to kick over, in the first match he scored 9 points from frees and six in last night's match from that position.

Stonecold wrote:

Great win, great performances all over the park. Bit of messing done in the 1st half with the wind but a completely different team the 2nd. Kildare support was disappointing. Pity poor Carlow they were robbed in injury time

Went into the mens after the match and briefly chatted to a chap I knew and there was this northern guy started chatting to me over me left shoulder about how the better team won etc, turned around and it was Gerry bloody Adams, "Good man Gerry how's she cuttin says I", disaster. You know in the film Braveheart when the boyos 1st meet William Wallace and they say thats not William Wallace, William Wallace is 7 feet tall etc felt like that meeting Gerry, he's a small scraney man..........

Ahh well roll on Leitrim!!!!!!!!!!!!

Expect a visit from the "boys" anytime soon!!!

First half probably one of the worst half of football i have ever seen but it doesnt help when the opposition just wanted to play defensive football.Very impressed with the second half something like we were playing last year.Subs made a big difference when they came in which is great to see.Like the look of P Kelly he looks very solid and like last week when he floored there no 11 in the second half with a shoulder he doesnt mind taking a yellow card for what i would call a good foul by letting the opposition know if they come into his area expect to get a slap.
Just on Bolton and Callaghan.I would have been one of the ones who wanted Bolton off the team but have to say since he has been moved to his natural position he looks a different player.Also same applies to Callaghan.When he was moved to halfback last week and played the sweeper role last night he also looks a different player who has great positional sence and distripution.The only 2 negatives for me were A mcloughlin and B flanagan .Both were behind their men till they were taken off and very easily could has been sent off for persisting fouling.Roll on next saturday.We might make it Croker this year after all.

JME wrote:

, so I'll get this out of the way first, take that Mr.Bradley. You won't have to worry about the nasty people anymore. In Fact it's the Antrim County Board I'd be worried about.

I would have loved to have rammed this result down Bradley's throat at the end. A few of the Antrim lads in front of me were booing johnny at the start when he was taking his frees. Let a shout out of me "I see that Bradley got what he wanted with his fans booing" to be fair they didnt do it again.

This was a good display by the lads. Stuck together and played some lovely football. Geezer made the right choice in moving Dermot in full forward. I dont think the big man ,at he moment ,is able for all the running that goes with playing midfield. I would not be at all surprised to see him play on the square on Saturday night again. If we could get Smith close to him it could prove very usefull.
The thing I hope now is that they play with the same fight and spirit against Leitrim and get another good result.

Credit where credit is due, Management and players took the flak after the Louth game and rightly so but conversely when you go up to any of the Ulster venues and return home after dishing out a tasty hammering then you got to give them credit. An excellent result and sounds like a very good team performance on and off the pitch.

Very good performance and a great win. Any away win is huge and hopefully the momentum will start rolling now. My one issue is that Antrim, after seeing them in the two games now, are a very poor football team. They are hard beaten but God they have very few actual footballers. That said we beat them by 9 away and could have beaten them by that at home too so, considering the state the lads were in on the first Saturday, the result was great.

I think Bradley's behaviour was adequately answered and he obviously sent his team out bitter because once they were beaten they were only interested fighting. Thankfully none of the Kildare players took the bait.

One final point and I don’t want to be ref bashing but how, if he is told about an incident by his linesman and he goes in search of the offending player, can the referee call play on if he doesn’t find the lad? A certain Antrim player was very lucky to stay on the field.

I’m not going to end on a negative so, fair play to Johnny, took a lot of flack in the first half for his free taking but his second half display was a joy to behold. A real sign of a class player to turn things around the way he did. I made sure everyone around me knew who scored when he did.

marcus wrote:

One final point and I don’t want to be ref bashing but how, if he is told about an incident by his linesman and he goes in search of the offending player, can the referee call play on if he doesn’t find the lad? A certain Antrim player was very lucky to stay on the field.

True, was that the same player big Willie had by the throat? I'd say he changed his jocks after that episode.....

Brilliant second half performance !! Much more like last year, fought tooth and nail for every single ball.

Kildare support has to be best in the country. Huge turnout in Casement and in the minors we outnumbered Longford at least ten to one.

Stonecold wrote:

Great win, great performances all over the park. Bit of messing done in the 1st half with the wind but a completely different team the 2nd. Kildare support was disappointing. Pity poor Carlow they were robbed in injury time

Went into the mens after the match and briefly chatted to a chap I knew and there was this northern guy started chatting to me over me left shoulder about how the better team won etc, turned around and it was Gerry bloody Adams, "Good man Gerry how's she cuttin says I", disaster. You know in the film Braveheart when the boyos 1st meet William Wallace and they say thats not William Wallace, William Wallace is 7 feet tall etc felt like that meeting Gerry, he's a small scraney man..........

Ahh well roll on Leitrim!!!!!!!!!!!!

i thought kildare support was good for distance they had to travel , i choose match over a family party

Here it is lads:

We got a hole two minutes, nice.

I Sky+ the GAA on TG4 hoping that we would get a little bit more of the match and what did I see, nothing that's what. Not a second of our game.
They even had ladies football highlights but nothing from our game.

All the better as nobody will have seen the improvement. Can't see us getting much coverage this weekend either.

Belfast was strangest place Ive ever attended a GAA match- mainly because it was only my second time in Belfast. I thought support was decent from Kildare considering the journey. Was strange to walk by the armoured police cars after the match... or even any kind of police presence

I'd say those policemen might have a tougher job over the next few days