TEN minutes in I had my doubts. Dermot Earley off, the rain spilling down, Meath 13 to nothing up and nursing a sense of injustice, their fans in raucous mood.
When you spend decades watching pretty much the same old story in these situations, it becomes ingrained in your psyche to an extent. So, after ten minutes, I lost a little belief in this team. What unfolded over the next hour and a bit made me feel ashamed to have nursed the slightest doubt. I will not make that mistake again.
The question is no longer whether you believe Kildare can win the AllIreland. The question is – how could you not believe it?
If Kerry or Meath were playing this sort of magical football, would you doubt them? I think not. I think you would be taking yourself to the bookies to back them.
It is important not to get carried away. All-Ireland semi-finals, let alone the competition itself, are not easily won. Down will test us to the limit. But the way Kildare are playing, it is hard not to feel confident that they can pass the test.
Sunday, bouncing on the steps as if they were a trampoline for the last ten minutes, was one of the greatest Kildare performances I have ever witnessed. It is not exaggerating to say it was one of the best days of my life. It did the soul and the heart and the mind good.
Think about it. Dermot Earley went off injured. Kildare fell six points down. Johnny Doyle and James Kavanagh each missed a free they would usually convert while sleepwalking. And still, after everything that could go wrong did go wrong, Kildare kicked Meath, one of our most feared rivals, off the pitch.
It’s time to be honest, as well, about the doubts I (and I was far from alone) harboured about Kieran McGeeney. When he got the job, I was excited to an extent but feared deep down that a manager with no experience was a bad idea.
Even though I was never one of those southern fans with an anti-northern bias (I enjoyed watching his Armagh side play), there was still a part of me that would rather have seen a Kildare man get the job.
I am also one of those Kildare fans that feel the team should play a certain brand of stylish and attacking football based on our rapidly-dimming heritage. The early flirtations with negative, defensive stuff filled me and many others with disquiet.
I knew he was an exceptional player – and one, like Johnny Doyle, who reached his station through sheer hard work – but I also thought the media had hyped his influence on Armagh up a little.
And there were plenty of days when those ugly little doubts were nurtured. The league games against Mayo and Derry the first year, the championship debacle against Wicklow.
I saw him discard players I rated and stick by players I didn’t and smugly decided that he was at times a poor tactician.
After the Laois game this year, I was one of those – and on my anecdotal evidence I’d say about 80 per cent of Kildare fans wondered the same – who thought the man might just be a small bit crazy. I never really believed that Paul Grimley had been the sole architect of Kildare’s strong showing in 2009, but I did think that his loss had left Kildare a shadow of their former selves..
Kieran McGeeney has left me and many others looking decidedly stupid. Look at Kildare players who a few years previously were crumbling at the first hint of pressure, and look at them on Sunday. You can only conclude that Kieran McGeeney is a special man.
He has said from day one that this wonderful game of ours is all about mentality. Those ingrained doubts that festered in my head after ten minutes on Sunday are part of the old GAA mentality. He has long eradicated them from his players’ minds.
The laughable part of my doubts over McGeeney is that I worried whether Kildare would play ugly football. My friends, I have never seen Kildare consistently play football with more attacking verve in games that really mattered in my life. I have seen us do it in fits and starts and we had very special days in the Mick O’Dwyer era, but this side is blessed with better forwards.
Can Kildare win the All-Ireland? Can you give me a single decent reason why they can’t?
Of course it us going to be nerve-wracking and of course Down are a massive danger. But we are right in contention.
Yes, it does the soul and the heart and the mind a power of good to see Kildare play this way. Whether they win the All-Ireland or not, I am going to enjoy supporting it.
And we will leave the tactics and the team selection and all the rest of it to Kieran McGeeney.
He knows more about it.