DUBLIN v KILDARE: GAVIN CUMMISKEYgets an insight from past and present Lilywhites into how the Kildare manager operates

TOMORROW WILL tell us more. Not everything we crave to know about Dublin and Kildare, but enough to sate the masses until the do-or-die rounds of late summer. We should know later which team is the more progressive under the regimented systems introduced by respective managers Pat Gilroy and Kieran McGeeney. We should also learn who has more football in them.

If not for the presence of Kalum King’s outstretched forearm, well, McGeeney’s complex playbook could have been put to the test against Cork in last year’s All-Ireland final.

But maybe they weren’t ready. Maybe, in year four of his stewardship, they are now.

This is not a decisive battle in the overall war but Kildare badly need to win something, ideally, the chalice McGeeney was expected to hold for a second time as Armagh captain in the infancy of this century, but felling Dublin gives them a direct path to the Delaney Cup.

And enough belief to march into unknown territory.

Statistics and vital moments linger from that two-point defeat to Down last August. Kildare kicked 12 wides. Alan Smith had a legitimate point singled wide. Down’s Benny Coulter punched a goal that would have been denied if the square ball rule was properly enforced (of course, even the incumbent GAA president is content to address this repetitive problem using the karmic “swings and roundabouts” theory, as he did, when recently asked about Graham Geraghty’s intrusion into Kildare’s square – which, of course, is really a rectangle).

Anyways, McGeeney gathered his men in a tightly formed circle in the centre of Croke Park after that chilling All-Ireland semi-final loss. We presume he made some reference to the battle of Thermopylae. Maybe not directly but in some form he touched upon the last stand of King Leonidas of Sparta because that is the tablet his coaching philosophy has been carved on. You die for the team cause. Shield in left hand, spear in right. A thin, unbreakable line.

Once the huddle unlocked, Anthony Rainbow finally parted ways with the Lilywhites after 18 years of service. When glancing back Rainbow sees a team with the capabilities to at least replicate, even surpass, the success of Mick O’Dwyer’s hot streak from 1998-2000.

“It is a very well organised group,” said Rainbow. “Under Micko lads looked out for each other in any way they could – on and off the pitch. Kieran has that going again here. It is like a close knit family.”

O’Dwyer took Kildare to an All-Ireland final in 1998 and a second Leinster title in 2000. McGeeney arrived in late 2007 with a specific recipe for success, taken from six successful Ulster campaigns, moulded into his own unique doctrine.

“It was chalk and cheese,” said Ronan Sweeney, part of the panel, along with Johnny Doyle, since 2000. “Micko’s style was great and I’d never say a bad word about the man.

“He did wonders for Kildare. It was so tough and based on endurance but now it’s probably more about speed and power which is used more in football these days.” The players needed to embrace McGeeney’s cerebral running game along with his fabled commitment levels before results could follow.

“The first couple of months Kieran was in, he was kind of feeling his way around a bit,” Sweeney explained.

“It was a totally new system he was bringing in to Kildare, totally new ideas that we had never seen before. It probably took us a while to get used to it.

“I don’t think there was ever a point when we didn’t trust him. Everyone who meets him knows he knows what he is at. He is a serious man. We knew from day one we were lucky to have him.”

The early scoring averages, of 10 points, was a concern coupled with a heavy reliance on Doyle. And then Wicklow, ironically under O’Dwyer, dumped them out of the championship.

“We were trying to play a way that didn’t suit the players that were here,” Sweeney continued. “It was a bit negative or whatever. We weren’t used to playing that way. After we were beaten by Wicklow in the championship we had a good old chat and realised we are going to play the way that’ll suit both the management and the players.

“We came up with a system that has been working for us ever since. We’ve been tweaking it but we are getting there.”

The only problem now seems to be the most important. A constant flow of wides is recurring; as the All-Ireland semi-final and 18 miscues against Meath showed.

“Ye seem to be a lot more worried about this than I am,” McGeeney told the media last week. “If we hit 18 wides and beat Dublin by a point I will be the happiest man there.” We doubt that. He’ll huddle them in tight and remind each man that nothing has been won.

“You don’t stop learning from Kieran,” corner back Aindriú Mac Lochlainn told us. “He has an abundance of knowledge and insight into the way teams play and the way he wants the game played.

“He’s a professional. I didn’t get the chance to play with him before he retired but he was professional even when the game was very amateur. His commitment to it is obsessive. He doesn’t leave any stone unturned. There’s nothing he hasn’t contemplated. Anything that Kieran says is gospel,” Mac Lochlainn said.

“It’s taken as read. Once it comes from him, that’s it, you do it. You do it to the letter of the law because you know it’s for the good of the team and if he says it’s good for you then you know it’s going to make you a better player. You just do it.”

Rainbow, an All Star in ’98 and one of the great halfbacks of his generation, was reduced to a peripheral role in his last two years but he remains an advocate of the McGeeney way.

“Yeah, he has definitely improved the way Kildare play. He has improved the strength and conditioning of the players over the last three or four years. If you look back before Kieran’s time in Kildare we had only won two qualifying games in six or seven years.

“Kieran came in and revamped the whole lot of it and we have been in two quarter-finals and a semi-final and we haven’t lost a qualifier game so I think that speaks for itself really.”

Now for the next step. In a long war, tomorrow will tell us more.