Kildare footballers face season-defining weekend

Kildare’s unravelling during the league was swift and brutal but there remains a sliver of thread on the spool – and so there remains a chance to salvage something from their season.

Kildare were not only relegated from Division Two but they finished the competition as one of only two sides throughout all four divisions not to pick up even a single point – Limerick joining them on that ignominious list.

It was a league campaign blighted by defeats, questions over Glenn Ryan’s future and even a post-match verbal exchange between the Kildare manager and a local reporter. Like a malfunctioning old jalopy, whichever direction Kildare turned in recent months they seemed to stutter from problem to problem.

So, after seven consecutive league losses, they are probably one of the few teams delighted to see the provincial championships starting in April, for it provides them with a chance to reset and start afresh.

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For Kildare, the pathway ahead is clear – they have two knockout championship matches to save their year. The first of those is against Wicklow in Portlaoise on Sunday, with the winner of that then meeting either Wexford or Louth in a Leinster semi-final.

Should Kildare get to the provincial decider they will snatch a place in the All-Ireland SFC and consign Westmeath to the Tailteann Cup. Should the Lilywhites fail to beat Wicklow or win any possible subsequent Leinster semi-final, then the Tailteann Cup is their lot for the summer. The provincial championships tend not to come with terminal consequences these days, but for Kildare it feels the stakes could not be much higher.

“You just draw a line in the sand and essentially the championship is a different competition, there’s no point dwelling on what happened in the league, that’s over and done with now,” says Kildare midfielder Kevin O’Callaghan.

“The consequences from that we’ll face next season, not this season. Now we just have to build on the performances that we put in towards the end which did progressively get better as the league went on. I know the results didn’t but our performances did. If we just draw one small thing from each match and put that towards the championship preparations, that’s all we can do.”

One area Kildare clearly need to see an improvement in is their scoring return, the Lilywhites posted the lowest tally of the 16 teams in the top two divisions. They finished with a total of 82 points – an average of 11.7 points per game.

“Our defensive structure was very good in the last few games,” adds O’Callaghan. “We probably let ourselves down in terms of our shooting efficiency or maybe the taking of our chances but we were creating as many chances as the teams we were playing.

“What we let ourselves down on during the league was the taking of those chances. If we start taking those chances, we won’t be far off it.”

The poor league campaign led to Kildare players receiving some criticism online and O’Callaghan admits he didn’t escape the trolls, though the Celbridge man tries not to let such abuse become a distraction.

“Obviously it’s never nice seeing bad things said about you online,” he says. “Some players might obviously struggle, and if they do hopefully they talk to somebody about it. It’s water off a duck’s back for me, I’ve heard it all before and I’ll hear it again, I’m sure.

“You need to have a thick skin to play any sport to any high level. Nobody is ever going to go through life without criticism if they are doing anything or trying to improve on themselves in any way, shape or form.”

Kildare will enter Sunday’s game as favourites but defeat to Wicklow, who delivered their best performance of the season last week when beating Westmeath, would see the Lilywhites play in football’s second tier competition for the rest of the season.

“I’m not even going to think about that for now,” says O’Callaghan. “We just have to win our next match and take it game by game. That hasn’t crossed my mind.”

But you can be sure it will be on the minds of Kildare supporters in Portlaoise this Sunday.