SOME may have thought that Kieran McGeeney was being the usual overly cautious GAA manager in playing down Saturday’s victory as something to enjoy for five minutes and then forget about.
But 24 hours later, when Kildare’s name was drawn alongside Monaghan, it was indeed enough to turn minds away from the joy of Celtic Park.
Monaghan boss Seamus ‘Banty’ McEneaney swore on Sunday that their dire Ulster final performance would not be the last we would see of them in championship 2010.
Normally, a week’s turnaround from such a big game might leave a team mentally vulnerable.
I do not expect that to be the case with Monaghan. Banty is a passionate man who never missed a Monaghan game as a fan through all the bleak days that county has endured since their last provincial crown in 1988.
With as shrewd an operator as Paul Grimley alongside him - a man who of course knows these Kildare players inside out - you can bet that Monaghan will hit this fourth round qualifier with considerable ferocity.
And don’t forget that before Sunday, most of us would probably have ranked Monaghan as the fourth-best team in the land.
And yet I find it hard to see Kildare losing. It is an incredible turnaround from just a few weeks ago, when after the Louth match it was very hard to see Kildare not losing, regardless of the opposition.
What is most impressive about McGeeney’s reign is the ability to respond to setbacks. The losses to Louth this year and Wicklow in 2008 were as bad as Kildare have performed in championship since the 1980s.
Grimley spoke in the buildup to the Ulster final last week of how it was his worst defeat in football. And lest we forget, in the aftermath of the Wicklow game, most of us had lost complete faith in McGeeney.
It seems silly now, but this column was calling for his head at the time, and was far from alone. The players must have been in a crisis of confidence as well.
It takes incredible mental strength and self-belief to turn
a ship around in such stormy waters. There is no magic wand - it is a long road of hard work, doing the simple things well, and clawing your way back to respectability.
When McGeeney was a player with Armagh, the players were told to remember the phrase ‘T-cup’ when a big game was in the melting pot. It stands for ‘Think Clearly Under Pressure’.
That is what Kildare have done these past three years when they’ve been at their best. Take their work off the ball on Saturday - every block, every flick, every tackle simply broke Derry’s hearts in the end until the Oak Leaf men were a mess.
Some pundits have spoken about the Derry and Antrim wins and concluded Kildare are only playing for half the game.
I believe they are missing the point. Yes, Kildare played their best football in the second half of both those games but they earned the right to do so by the quality of their work rate and tackling from the start. That cleared the way to dismantle the opposition late on - because the opposition were simply out of ideas about how to break Kildare down at that stage.
Of course, Kildare are still far from perfect. James Kavanagh had a bad day, and he is such an important player that Kildare need him at his best against Monaghan, assuming he starts. Some of our distribution is still not first rate. Look at Tyrone - almost every player on that team is supremely comfortable on the ball, and their full-backs are among the more skilful players in the country.
Still, it is a time to celebrate the good things about Kildare. Having one of the best midfielders to have played for the county does our cause no harm at all, and it did the heart good to see Dermot Earley back at his brilliant best. Enda Muldoon and Joe Diver are no bad players, and yet they simply weren’t good enough to play with Earley and the ever-improving Daryl Flynn.
Only Eamonn Callaghan was better than Earley, and Peter Kelly was another man-of-the-match contender.
When we didn’t have the ball, Johnny Doyle epitomised what the Lilywhites are about. His appetite for hard work is astounding. Even if he never touched the ball - and of course he is a class act then as well - Doyle would be worth having in the team for work rate alone.
The next few days will be full of nervous anticipation for Kildare supporters desperate for this season not to end.
But fortunately we do not have to be focused like the players and can enjoy the Derry win for more than five minutes.
To see their supporters streaming out of Celtic Park long before the end, at a ground where we have known only embarrassment and misery, was a sight to enjoy. It felt grand, simply grand.