Considering I had a lump in my throat walking out of Pearse Park on Sunday, I would imagine the tears flowed in the Kildare minor dressing room.
Football is not life and death and it is irresponsible to refer to it as such, but the final whistle on Sunday’s Leinster minor semifinal felt like a death, a sickening, unexpected disaster that leaves you bewildered and full of sorrow.
We spoke of this Kildare minor team as All-Ireland contenders. That dream may well have died at some point, but it should not have died like this, undone by three goals without our two best players five days after the titanic win over Dublin.
The gripe first. A 10-year-old child organising an after-school Subbutteo league with his pals could come up with a better competition structure.
A brave Dublin minor team rightly got a second chance after we beat them in round one, and proved themselves worthy of it.
Longford got a second chance after losing by 22 points to Offaly in round one, and proved themselves worthy of it.
Indeed the only teams in Leinster who don’t get a second chance are those who win their quarter-final and lose the semi.
Longford and Dublin get a chance to put things right, but a Kildare side that provided us with a string of wonderful games do not. It is a retarded system. You are either having a back door, or you are not.
The pain those players are feeling is hard to imagine. I feel a sense of loss and all I have invested in this team is going to watch most of their championship games. They have built much of their lives around it for at least two years.
Our only hope is that the best players from this side will find motivation from the pain; that it will make them more determined county under-21s and hopefully seniors, but that is scant consolation now.
It was just like the 2006 Leinster under-21 championship, when a plucky Longford side undid a fancied Kildare team that had overcome Dublin and Meath with a few scrappy three-pointers.
We won’t talk much about Sunday’s match itself. It doesn’t matter. We lost, it’s gone, and all that is left in place of our dreams for this fine group of players is an empty sense of grief.
TO HAPPIER matters. Kildare started on Saturday night in Casement Park playing like they did in the drawn game. That is, they were the better side, but the crisp end product was not there, and their hard work was not reflected on the scoreboard.
But they ended with the confidence and swagger of 2009 firmly back in their step.
We were highly critical of this side and management team after the Louth game, but they have found their form through sheer hard work and persistence.
In that drawn game there were plenty of opportunities for Kildare to bow out, to seek solace in excuses, to conclude that it was just not their year. They managed to hold on at the end of normal time when Antrim seemed certain to win, and now they have their reward.
There is no doubt Kildare are mentally tougher under McGeeney than in the middle part of the last decade, when we would not have had the resolve to head to a difficult venue like Casement and hand out a footballing lesson.
Kildare have rehabilitated themselves by first focussing on their work without the ball. Fans of both sides left the ground talking about how bad Antrim’s forwards were. Yet before these games, we spoke of the threat posed by that same unit.
Michael McCann was an all-star nominee last year and yet in two games against us, he did not score. Paddy Cunningham posed little threat from play, apart from trying to draw frees, and Kevin Niblock, while still showing his vision and passing ability at times, was more or less negated.
It is something that the whole team can take credit for, because Antrim like to run the ball and Kildare’s forwards worked like dogs to make it difficult for them.
That made life easier for those at the back, where Peter Kelly, Hugh McGrillen, Morgan O’Flaherty and Emmet Bolton were very impressive.
That hard work, absent against Louth, was present all through the 90 minutes the first day, and again in the first 35 on Saturday.
With that foundation laid, Kildare eventually found their rhythm, but for all the good football, the fact is that sheer grit and hard work left Antrim broken by the end.
Of course, Kildare still have much to improve on, but the feeling is that a return to the championship proper is achievable. This team still have to make up the Leinster failure to themselves, more so than to the supporters. They show the right attributes to do so.