The ties that bind Dublin and Kildare

No more time for mixed emotions. Dublin and Kildare are still juggling the feelings of disappointment and relief, those of loss and survival. But what happened last Sunday week will mean nothing come Saturday afternoon. In returning to Croke Park to relive the Leinster football final, they may as well be starting from scratch. Already they have served up a game that has spun into every conversation surrounding this summer's championship. Not that the revisiting of Leinster rivalry between Dublin and Kildare is anything novel. For the third time in seven years, the counties face each other in a replay and, to add further spice, they've each scored one victory on the second time of asking.

In 1994, Dublin were Leinster champions and met a young and eager Kildare team in the quarter-final - the opening game of their title defence. The tension and drama of that close finish compensated somewhat for the shortcomings in the standard of football, but when Charlie Redmond saved the day for Dublin with the equalising score, the feeling at the time was that Kildare were still not regarded as a major threat to Dublin's Leinster dominance.

Mick Deegan was among the body of established Dublin players during that decade and he recalls the sense of superiority that pervaded their approach to meetings with Kildare at the time. "It wasn't being particularly big-headed or anything like that, but we always expected to win when we went out against Kildare," he says. "And of course the supporters were expecting us to win also. We hadn't played well in the first game but we never thought about losing in the replay." Kildare buckled when the sides met again and the five-point winning margin for Dublin - 1-14 to 1-9 - failed to reflect their superiority.

Brian Fahy was the Kildare wing back for both matches, but it is the first game which brought about the greatest disappointment. "We were six points up at one stage and that made it very hard to come out level. We were very confident for that game and it had been drilled into us that we were capable of beating Dublin.

"But then nothing clicked for us the second day. We never fulfilled our potential and, in some ways, we left a lot of it behind us the first day. But we had rested up well the week before and tried hard to gather the momentum again. I suppose it was just hard to get over the first game and who knows, if we had got through that it may have been the start of the glory days."

But it was Dublin who went on to greater things and Deegan played throughout the heights of 1995 until the two counties next met in 1998 - again at the quarter-final stage. By then, however, times had changed and Kildare were no longer just hungry, they were capable of matching Dublin. "We were really regarded as an older side by then, with only a couple of young bloods in the team," says Deegan. "And of course a lot of us were suffering a little bit from wear and tear. We didn't play well at all in the first game, and just about got away with the draw, really."

That was Tom Carr's first championship game as Dublin manager and it wasn't pretty to watch. Kildare could have had two goals in the early exchanges and, even though Jim Gavin scored the match-saving point for Dublin - leaving it at 0-10 each - Keith Barr was still forced to pull off a dramatic interception in the dying moments. Deegan ended the drawn game at corner back but started at full forward for the replay. "There was still no lack of confidence in Dublin when we went into the replay. That team had been through a lot and had won everything. But nobody likes it when they realise that their time is up and it's never easy to accept it either. That was the first time that I'd ever lost to Kildare as a player."

This year, Kildare have already experienced the pressures of a replay, drawing with Offaly in the semi-final before eventually sneaking past with one of their highest scoring tallies of recent years - 017. "A lot of these Kildare players were also around in 1994," says Fahy. "But they've really matured as a team and they're so much stronger now. There's a bond there now that wasn't there before and I don't think they'll have any problem coming back at Dublin again."

Deegan is also quick to point out that this is almost an entirely new Dublin team from two years ago. "I think back to 1998, and the Dublin team that was playing then and the team that is playing now are totally different. That (1998) was the start of the rebuilding phase as well. A lot of us finished up after that and it's a much younger team now."

"As for this year, I think Dublin were very much untested coming into the first game, no doubt about that. Kildare already had three hard games behind them and given the speed at which they started, it showed. But Dublin will take a lot from that first game and I honestly feel it will stand to them."