Kildare dare to hope again

TEN MINUTES into the Leinster first-round match against Laois, something snapped in Kildare's collective head. Two of the team's full forward line had been sent off and even the county's pre-match rating as long-shots began to look hopelessly optimistic.

Kildare. The Lilywhites. Seldom has a county's nickname seemed so resonant: an imaginative evocation of the unsullied blank canvas that is the county's roll of honour in recent times, the virginal innocence of the hype that sweeps through the place at the slightest hint of success and the conjunction of lily and livered, a regretful reference to the number of times Kildare's nerve has come up short on the big championship days of summer.

Until last month, what might be loosely termed the current team or those who have been together since Mick O'Dwyer's first coming in 1990, hadn't beaten one of Leinster's second-ranked counties let alone one of the top tier of Dublin and Meath. Wicklow, Westmeath and Offaly were the sum total of Kildare's conquests this decade.

So when Johnny McDonald and Martin Lynch got the line in quick succession and the 13-man team had to face a fit, confident, full-strength Laois side, it wasn't hard to imagine the Kildare crowd chucking in a modest laundry of small, lilywhite towels.

Much has been made of what happened next. Instead of being beaten off the pitch or contenting themselves with a brave show, Kildare dug in, defended like demons, initiated a frenetic short game and took their scores while the Laois team disintegrated, each of the players waiting for another to take the match by the scruff of the neck.

Firstly, there is a positive spin on what all this means for Kildare. As one former adversary put it: "For the first time they've managed to dig deep and hang on when things were going against them. They know now what they're capable of".

This theory "With one bound, they were free" may prove to have its merits, (but even within the Kildare camp, it's beginning to grate a little as tomorrow's critical appointment with All-Ireland champions, Meath approaches.

Veteran corner back Davy Dalton, coaxed out of retirement for this championship and as effective as ever last month, is anxious to tone down the wilder implications being conferred on the success.

"To win when you're two men down is a good performance by any team but we have to look forward, not back. We'll find out on Sunday if it was a big thing or not. It was the best championship performance we've given, yeah, but one swallow doesn't make a summer and we'd be better off forgetting about Laois."

Selector John Crofton prefers to see the resilience of the display as symptomatic of gradual improvement. "We were all shell-shocked at the time. The fellas lifted themselves and what took place subsequently had to benefit them, but I don't think that one win will suddenly inject them with that quality. It's been coming.

"Remember, we finished top of the League on points. It was a good League campaign even if it ended with a disappointing performance against Cork (League semi-final), a disappointing first 20 minutes - well you'd have to say the whole game because we can t say whether Cork took their foot off the pedal after those early goals."

"We weren't impressive against Offaly (League quarter-final) either, but we came back at them to win and showed elements of what we did against Laois."

All this talk - and talking down - of redemption isn't surprising, because there's much to redeem.

It's seven long years since Mick O'Dwyer first appeared as Kildare's manager and that includes a two-year break, 1994-96. At first everything sparkled. The hype was enormous, a well-to-do Supporters' Club was founded and the county experienced febrile levels of interest in football.

In response, the team was promoted from Division Two of the League and hasn't surrendered top status. They reached the 1991 League final where, in what was to become an accursed custom, they lost narrowly to Dublin.

It would surely have scarified O'Dwyer to have been told that that was as good as it would get for Kildare. Little over a month after the League final of six years ago, the team was surprisingly beaten by Louth in the championship.

There followed three seasons of not alone losing to Dublin but doing so as haplessly as possible. Two Leinster finals which each included a share of opportunity for Kildare went by the board and, famously, in 1994, having taken the lead in injury-time of their first-round match, they allowed Dublin to engineer an equaliser from the kick-out.

Dublin strolled the replay and at that stage O'Dwyer threw his hat at the whole thing. By then, according to observers, he looked tired "a cranky old man" in the words of one.

Last Thursday evening at the Hawksfield training ground outside Newbridge, everything was sunny again, literally and figuratively.

O'Dwyer, who returned last autumn after Dermot Earley's frustrating two- year inter-regnum, was back looking fit and well, neither cranky nor old.

In the midst of the carnival of RTE cameras, ticket-hunting spectators and anxious fans scrutinising the team's influential team captain Glen Ryan for signs of a hand injury that had threatened his place on the team,

O'Dwyer appears happy enough.

Then again, he always does. It's nearly 40 years since his first All- Ireland final and he has been almost continually in the football spotlight ever since.

In part creation and part confusion of his eternal mystique he talks loquaciously about matches to come without ever allowing the listener feel they have access to the indefatigable football mind that has encompassed 12 senior All-Irelands - 40 per cent of Kerry's total - as a player and manager.

But off he goes, all enthusiasm about the victory over Laois. "There's no doubt we showed fire and commitment and if we do that again, we're in with a shout. We needed the bit of luck. Teams like Meath or Kerry when I was in charge didn't need it, they got it anyway, but a county like Kildare needs it.

Even the most fervent Kildare supporter has only qualified faith in tomorrow. The lengthy course of disappointment and cracked ambition has inoculated the county. It takes more than beating Laois to trigger an epidemic of high hopes.

"I don't expect," says John Crofton, "that winning a match against Laois will suddenly turn a corner. Quite a number of the players are 26, 27 and 28. They've been through a period of hard work with no particular reward.

"That's why they really enjoyed the League, they won a few matches and reached the final stages. There's a degree of freshness and enthusiasm about the whole thing and a real anticipation that they can win this. What was encouraging about the last day was the conviction they showed to stay in the championship."

The crowd thins and players emerge from the dressing room, and leave the treatment table. There is a barbecue arranged for the panel and as has been the summer's meteorological habit, rain starts to fall with the dusk.

Micko heads for home and another four-and-a-half hour drive to Waterville. If only all long roads eventually led somewhere.