Athy's faith in their own pays off

It was hard to get away from the very obvious juxtaposition between the two management teams for Sunday’s Joe Mallon Motors Senior Football Championship final at Cedral St Conleths Park.

On one hand, there was Conor Ronan and Ross Bell, Athy clubmen to the core, on the other there was the high profile outside appointment for the Naas position in Philly McMahon.

As a club, Athy must have been tempted to go looking for a big name when their job became available at the end of last season. They would have been aware that the heart of their team – David Hyland, Kevin Feely, Niall Kelly – were into their 30s and while not exactly in last chance saloon in terms of chasing county titles, were loitering around outside it and thinking about entering.

Ronan and Bell had enjoyed success with the club’s second team and were given the opportunity to make a pitch for the first team job and did enough to impress.

Athy chose to play to their strengths. They are at their best when all together taking on the world.

Captain Hyland’s acceptance speech as he stood in the stand of Cedral St Conleths Park beside the Dermot Bourke Cup was telling. His first words were to take a swipe at anybody who doubted them – bookies, Leinster Council and local media.

What they have done, and in particular Ronan and Bell, is harness all that energy in the right direction. Any slight against them, no matter how trivial, was twisted and turned into a motivating factor.

On the field, Barry Kelly was the perfect example on county final day of how the management have curbed the team’s discipline and improved their focus. In the past, there has been times when Kelly has played the occasion and not the game. Got caught up in too much of the off the ball stuff and forgotten his main role as a player.

Sunday was his finest hour as he had the game of his life, the perfect embodiment of somebody being fired up for the match but still focusing on doing the right thing at the right time. When Athy were looking a little devoid of ideas during the first half, Kelly’s enthusiasm and work rate was infectious and he brought a spark of life to his team-mates, and even those in the stands.

His attitude suited the team perfectly, it was Athy versus the world and this time Athy won.

Hyland’s speech also touched on the loss of his mother, Maura, and reaffirmed that county final day is as much about remembering those sadly no longer with us as it is about enjoying the moment with those present.

Tears of joy and relief flowed after the final whistle. It takes a lot of effort and sacrifices to win a senior county title in Kildare. Most years those efforts go unrewarded which only makes it all the more sweeter when you get to hold the Dermot Bourke Cup surrounded by friends and family in jubilant celebrations.

The joyful scenes for those in red were in obvious contrast to the desolation felt by Naas.

They have been on a record breaking run of success but the problem with winning is that it makes you greedy. The more you win the more you want to keep winning.

They pushed the boat out to appoint McMahon and from outside the club, he will be seen as failure as their title winning run was ended was ended, but the margins are razor thin.

Naas were on a long unbeaten Championship run going back to 2020 and looking for a fifth successive title but their dominance in Kildare was in no way similar to the manner in which the club’s hurlers dominate their landscape.

Under Joe Murphy, they scraped past Clane in a semi-final in 2023 thanks to Darragh Kirwan’s intervention off the bench before beating Celbridge by two points in the final. Last year was even tighter, they needed extra time to beat Athy in the semi-final and had only a point to spare in the final against Celbridge.

Murphy will be forever remembered as a hero in the club for leading the team to those narrow wins and it would be unfair on McMahon if he is remembered for such a narrow defeat but such is life at the upper end of the elite sport that top level club football has turned into, and and the Dublin legend will know that better than most.

The question for Naas now is do they stick or twist with McMahon?

It would be very interesting to hear from those inside the club as to whether McMahon has shown enough in his short time there to suggest that given a full pre-season to prepare the team that he could push them on.

There’s no doubt that it has been a difficult 12 months for the Naas team. Even for a club of their size and resources it is extremely difficult to keep everything in place for a sustained period of time. That’s why for so long the three-in-a-row was seen as the Holy Grail in Kildare, and why so many very good teams fell short of that.

Naas completed the first treble of titles in Kildare for over 70 years, and then came back and added a fourth for good measure.

Since then a lot has happened to hamper their chances of a five-in-a-row, some within their control, some out of it. For example, who could have foreseen that Carlow appointing Shane Curran as their manager would have a knock on effect in the Kildare Championship?

The first blow to Naas’ chances was the departure of high rated coach Kevin Downes at the end of last season. Not only has Downes been universally loved wherever he has gone, he dovetailed brilliantly with Murphy and the pair worked perfectly in tandem. Downes out coaching on the field while Murphy oversaw it all, they were a brilliant partnership.

It would have been agonising for Naas to see a Cuala side who they so were close to in Leinster go on to enjoy All-Ireland glory and maybe that pushed them into a controversial and misguided pursuit of Rory Gallagher to replace Downes.

Murphy has since spoken on Colm Parkinson’s Smaller Fish podcast and taken the blame for that but whoever was at the heart of the chase quickly backtracked as the potential appointment drew criticism from inside and outside the club, and even prompted a letter to Naas from GAA President Jarlath Burns.

Downes’ departure had left a void and perhaps caused Murphy to become a little unsettled in his role but it is still highly unlikely that he would have left the club for anything other than the circumstances that played out at the end of March.

Curran’s time Carlow was so disastrous that it led to that rarity of things in the GAA, a mid-season departure for an inter-county manager.

It’s hard to envisage Murphy leaving the chase of a fifth successive title with Naas, and the pursuit of titles outside of Kildare, for anybody other than Carlow but the emotional pull of his own county was too much to resist.

He had less than a week for prepare for his first game manager of Carlow in the Leinster Championship against a Meath team who were going through an upheaval of their own. Coaches Martin Corey and Joe McMahon raised a lot of eyebrows when they left their roles under manager Robbie Brennan barely a week before the first Championship game.

Naas sounded out that duo and they were a long way down the road of being appointed as replacements for Murphy before backing out at the last minute and ending up at Kilcoo. There was a certain irony that they were enjoying Championship success in Down on Sunday as Naas’ hopes hit the rocks.

Padraig Cribben was the man who kept Naas on track as they went two and a half months without a manager before appointing McMahon in the middle of June.

His glittering playing career needs no introduction but in his first role as bainisteoir he was pitched into a situation that even the most experienced manager would have found difficult.

Help was on hand from Naas stalwarts like Cribben, Kevin Martin and Martin Sweeney but McMahon and his coach James Burke still had to go through the process of getting to know the entire squad with precious little time before the commencement of the white heat of Championship battle.

Ironically enough, another huge blow to Naas’ chances happened a week before McMahon’s arrival when his coach’s namesake suffered a season ending injury while playing for Kildare hurlers in the McDonagh Cup final at Croke Park.

It was a sickening injury for Burke to suffer in the final seconds of what had been such a wonderful day for him and his loss probably wasn’t fully appreciated until the county final. Paul McDermott and Fintan Quinn are fine players, and Quinn in particular still has plenty of time to develop, but how Naas must have wished they could have called on Burke to try combat the colossal Athy midfield duo of Kevin Feely and David Hyland.

Their quality is undoubted but as well as that, they were just able to add some sort of level of calmness and composure to those crazy and frantic last few minutes as Naas were pushing hard to level the game.

How Naas proceed from here will be fascinating but one thing is for sure, this isn’t the end of a dynasty and whether it’s McMahon leading them or somebody else next season they will still be a force to be reckoned with.

They will have to sit back now and watch Athy attempt to go where they fell short, and that’s in Leinster.

The Athy celebrations will go on long into this week, as they rightly should, but there will come a time when they look at Leinster and they should see the opportunities ahead.

It’s been a long wait to get back to this stage. Covid meant there was no Leinster Championship after their last Kildare title in 2020 so you have to go back to 2011 for their last provincial games.

Back then, Feely and Hyland were the fresh youngsters among a team who really caught the eye of those outside of Kildare. Joint manager Bell and two other members of the current management team, James Eaton and Paddy Dunne, were also part of that side.

Edenderry of Offaly and Old Leighlin were beaten before they just fell short against a Dessie Dolan inspired Garrycastle in the semi-final.

Feely and Hyland were two of ten under 21s in their squad for that game against the Westmeath champions and they seemed to have the age profile of team who would go and compete at that level again.

It’s been a long wait since then but Athy get another crack at Leinster glory starting in Aughrim against Baltinglass on Sunday 2nd November and it’s an opportunity they will surely relish.