Kildare desperate to end Galway hoodoo
Alex Beirne and his Kildare team will be hoping to shrug off their Leinster Championship semi-final defeat at the hand of Westmeath. Photo: INPHO/James Lawlor.
You could argue any draw would have been a difficult one for Kildare given our low ranking in football these days, certainly in the context of a competition involving supposedly the best sixteen teams in the country.
Galway, though, are statistically the worst county we could have met in the first round of the spanking new format All Ireland Championship.
Famously, we have not lowered the maroon colours since February 1985. Larry Tompkins and Shay Fahy were still plying their trade in white that day and scored 1-7 of Kildare’s 1-13 between them in Newbridge.
It’s incredible to think that we have beaten every single county in Ireland at least once in the last twenty years, let alone during the last forty. Apart from Galway, the longest wait for a win is against Armagh, who we haven’t beaten since 2007.
It’s not like we haven’t met the Tribesmen much either. There have been 14 clashes since that 1985 affair and apart from three draws Galway have won all the others. There’s dominance and then there’s repression.
Of course, the relationship reached its nadir from a Kildare point of view with the heartbreak of 1998’s final. And naturally, who else would be the current Galway manager only Pádraic Joyce, destroyer of our dreams in Croke Park 28 years ago.
Who would have thought we would never come as close again to savouring the ultimate glory of a Sam Maguire triumph? That our stock would sink back to the level it is at today.
After relegation from Division 2 and misfiring against Westmeath in the provincial semi-final, a reversal exacerbated by the Lake County’s subsequent Leinster win over Dublin last weekend, it feels like Kildare are gatecrashing the Sam Maguire party. Let’s face it, we snuck in the back door as Tailteann Cup winners and no one, literally no one, will fear us.
No doubt Brian Flanagan and his panel will have knuckled down to work following the disappointment in Tullamore. At the time of writing there have been no confirmed squad changes, though it would make sense for Flanagan to bring in a couple of the under-20’s now their campaign is over. It was a ploy that gave Eoin Cully some senior experience last year and can help lay some groundwork for 2027 if nothing else.
Hopefully Kildare have been working on their shot-selection and shooting accuracy since the last day against Westmeath. Mind you, it’s been an issue for the guts of half a century and possibly more so there will be no easy fixes.
Goalkeeper, centre-back and midfield are other problem areas that Flanagan may have pondered and elected for a Plan B since the Leinster exit but to date he has proven cautious and unlikely to make radical changes. It seems doubtful he’ll have pulled a “Mark McHugh/John Heslin” stroke.
Whether Kildare have any chance in Salthill on Saturday evening (7.30 pm) may depend as much on Galway’s state of mind as their own. Their Connacht Final loss to Roscommon will have stung and there is a sense now that Joyce’s reign may have already peaked and perhaps, he is merely seeing out time. The rather unexpected transfer of Seán Fitzpatrick to Love Island perhaps adds to that sense of a team going nowhere, at least on the football field.
What Flanagan hopefully noted was the pace with which Roscommon ran at the Galway defence and the fruits of that strategy. There’s a definite vulnerability there. Sadly, it’s one thing that has been lacking from the Kildare set-up this year with the loss of the likes of Paddy McDermott, Daniel Flynn and Kevin Flynn.
Can Kildare win and lift what surely must be a curse? The bookies would say otherwise with Galway 1/10 on and it’s hard to argue with them. It’s a long time since Owenbeg and Newbridge or Nowhere, eight years ago to be precise, but that is the level Kildare will have to get to if they’re to get close to Galway.
We’ll travel in hope, with any expectation stuffed into the back pocket.
