Battle-hardened Kildare eye historic minor breakthrough

After the drama of the Leinster championship win on penalties over Meath a couple of weeks ago, Tommy Konstantin’s Kildare minor footballers will be looking to earn a rare success outside the province in the All-Ireland series next week.

In many ways this year’s team has displayed untypical qualities for a Kildare side, in that they seem to thrive when games are going against them and it is tight coming down the finishing straight. Both Louth in the provincial semi-final and Meath in the decider could lay claim to have been the more impressive teams in general play for much of those games.

But it was Konstantin’s boys who dug deep on both occasions. The breakaway goal finished by Jack Doran put paid to a wasteful Louth and both in normal time and extra time Kildare came back from the dead to deny Meath before dispatching those five penalties with aplomb.

Those are the sort of traits that will stand to them when they come up against the beaten Munster finalists, Kerry, who come into this with a couple of defeats to old rivals Cork behind them in their provincial campaign.

The Kingdom, managed by Marc Ó Sé, were outplayed in the group game between the two, losing 3-18 to 1-14 in Tralee but a much-changed team were far more competitive in a humdinger of a Munster final played in searching conditions of driving rain.

Centre-back Cian Stack and centre-forward Daragh Keane, who scored six points, were inspirational figures for the Kingdom as they looked like overturning the round robin result, but Cork found a late equaliser to drag the game to extra-time.

Kerry lost both Keane and midfielder Maidhc Ó Sé to injury in extra-time as Cork edged them by 1-13 to 0-14 and it will be interesting to see if that pair make it back for the quarter final.

History suggests Kildare will have it all to do. Having emerged from Leinster nine times prior to this year, Lilywhite teams have only made it through to one All-Ireland final, a poor return. That was at their first attempt, in 1973, when they beat Mayo by a point in the semi-final before going down to Tyrone (2-11 to 1-6) in the decider.

Indeed, overall Kildare have played nineteen games in the All-Ireland series and only managed four wins, with fifteen defeats. Apart from that 1973 win against Mayo, they beat Warwickshire in 1975, Cavan in 2015 and Mayo again in 2016.

We have come up against Kerry four times and have failed to lower Kingdom colours in defeats in 2004, 2014, 2016 and most recently in Nowlan Park in 2023 when five points separated the teams despite a fine performance from Joey Cunningham who landed eight points for Niall Cronin’s team.

The 2016 meeting, in the semi-final, saw a Kildare team head into Croke Park buoyant from Leinster success and a promising quarter-final win over Mayo, in which Jack Robinson starred with a personal tally of 1-5.

Kerry, though, were described by the Kildare Nationalist as “almost playing a different game” as they blitzed Kildare in the second half on the way to a facile 22-point victory, with a certain D Clifford landing eight points for the victors. Wonder what became of him? Or of Seán O’Shea who registered five white flags.

Konstantin will have some difficult decisions to make ahead of this one. He will be tempted to re-instate Logan Tennyson, the scoring hero of the Leinster final, while Aodhán Bergin will challenge Aidan Tobin for the centre-forward position now he has returned to fitness. Fiachra Martin is another who made a big impact when he came on in that one.

Given the Kildare record at this level and the difficulty of comparing teams from different provinces, it is difficult to be entirely confident with any prediction, but this Lilywhite team have shown plenty of guts and character to date and the signs are this might not be the strongest Kerry team of recent years.

Kildare will need to be at their best to come through it, and they’ll look to Charlie Doran, Eoghan Lyons and Páidí Ryan to produce top form again. Fingers crossed they can break new ground with a first win over the Kingdom at the age group.