The snow is gone and the show must get back on the road.
As it fell relentlessly over Kildare from Tuesday night onwards it meant that Cian O’Neill’s charges were forced to call a halt to pitch sessions for the guts of a week, attempting to fit in their own individual gym sessions where safe to do so.
“It has been difficult, but it’s the same for everyone else – it’s not just a Kildare issue,” conceded O’Neill, who revealed that the team had not trained together since last Tuesday before they were due to regroup this Tuesday gone.
“I know that we got it a little bit worse than the rest of the country, along with Dublin, Wicklow and Wexford from what I understand, but everybody is in the same boat. The players have been absolutely brilliant in terms of getting their own individual sessions done, and in some cases regional sessions where the Celbridge lads have grouped together, the same with the Johnstownbridge guys.
“They’ve been working on their own under the guidance of Neil, Jason and Rob in the medical team. We’ve been monitoring that from a distance, and a lot of it comes down to personal responsibility. I think the guys have shown that in spades in the last week because they want to be training. It just wasn’t possible.”
That makes Sunday’s game all the more intriguing. Pitches were frozen in Mayo for the majority of last week too, but the players were at least able to travel and meet collectively. Maybe a break for a few days might have done the Kildare players the world of good after suffering what O’Neill described as a dis-heartening and cruel defeat to Donegal last time out.
With captain Eoin Doyle sent off in the 14th minute for a controversial offence regarding the wearing of his gumshields, Kildare were always going to find the going tough, but they dug in and almost snatched an unlikely win.
“It was dis-heartening and it was cruel the way the match unfolded on the lads because they really started with great intensity and they had a great purpose about how they were playing,” said O’Neill.
“Obviously that changes when you lose a man so early, but to their credit when Donegal rattled off four points at the start of the second half they could have just faltered, they could have broken down, but they kept fighting back and they showed great resilience and effort. That has to be positive.
“It doesn’t take away from the fact that we lost another tight game – we lost a game by two points. Even with 14 men we had opportunities in that game – so that’s disappointing. To be fair to the group, they’ve stayed positive, they’ve stayed strong and, most importantly, they’ve stayed together. We know we’re not that far away and the big thing for us is that we just need to find those answers in those tight situations. Those clutch situations in a game; how can we turn a one-point defeat into a one-point victory?”
O’Neill was quite happy to point out that his side have found the going tough in Division 1 – four successive defeats can’t point to anything but a rough ride – but he has seen a marked improvement in some areas of Kildare’s game. It’s a hard point to argue with as last year Kildare were competing against a much lower standard of team, and this year they have shown that they can at least spar with the very best in the land.
Mayo's Aidan O'Shea puts the pressure on Tommy Moolick back in 2014“The step up to from Division 3 to Division 2 was significant, and we coped with that last year, but the step up from Division 2 to Division 1 is quite significant,” he said.
“I firmly believe we are playing a lot better and a lot more controlled, a lot more organised at this time than we were last year, but the difference is that it was good enough last year against Division 2 teams but it’s simply not good enough this year against the top opposition in the country. That’s all part of the learning process, and we’re not hiding away from the fact that we need to be better.” We’re still making mistakes; we’re still turning the ball over too much, a couple of goals have gone in that we weren’t happy with, and our shooting has been off a bit at times, but they are things we can work on.”
What must be the most frustrating thing for the Kildare manager is the narrative that is placed around the team from outside the county. The national media will have Kildare painted as a hopeless cause who are out of their depth in Division 1, but a -11 scoring difference points to a team that is competing. Take Donegal for instance, who went into the Kildare game with plenty of people singing their praises despite losing their first three ties. They just about managed to beat a similarly winless team who played for 60-odd minutes with 14 men, yet now they are seen to be progressing hugely.
The difference between losing by one point and winning by one point is minimal on the field, but what it does to change the mood around a team is sizeable.
“Donegal were in the exact same position as us going into last weekend,” noted O’Neill.
“It’s interesting because the narrative was that people were applauding Donegal with the way they were going at it even though they were the exact same as us – nought from three. There was almost an absence of respect over how close and competitive we were in our matches, and it’s just interesting how teams can be perceived. If we had got that two-point victory last weekend – or even a one-point victory – with 14 men against Donegal it would have been world-changing for us in the eyes of those outside the camp, and it would have been Donegal nought from four. Minor, minor, minor differences that can cause change and affect change.”
So to the challenge of Mayo, who come into this game in poor form having averaged just 12.5 points per game in the league thus far. Stephen Rochford’s side have only beaten a 12-man Monaghan team in the opening round of this year’s competition, but they do tend to pull themselves clear of relegation trouble around this point every season, and you don’t need to tell O’Neill that.
For Mayo it would be a disaster to drop out of Division 1, while for Kildare it won’t be painted as such due to their inexperience at this level, but it will hurt the players and management.
“Mayo have been traditionally slow starts in the league,” he said.
“That’s nothing new to them, but they’ve always came strong towards the end of the league. If you want to apply that logic to the question then no, it’s not a good time. But we don’t look at them; we look at our own performance and how we can improve.”
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