Daunting visit to Omagh awaits Kildare

After a year of Division 3 and Tailteann Cup football, Brian Flanagan’s Kildare are making a considerable step up in class when they head to Healy Park, Omagh for Saturday night’s National League Division 2 opener against last year’s All-Ireland semi-finalists.

Flanagan would love to have a few more experienced players to call upon, of course. But Mick O’Grady, Daniel Flynn, Niall Kelly and David Hyland have retired and the likes of Kevin Flynn, Aaron Masterson, Paddy McDermott and Ryan Houlihan are not with the panel.

Then there’s the injuries. The over-worked medical team are having to help Darragh Kirwan, Jimmy Hyland, Jack Robinson, Ben McCormack, Colm Dalton, James McGrath, Tommy Gill, Jack McKevitt, Daragh Ryan, Dan Lynam, Neil Flynn, Shane Farrell and Cathal Hagney to deal with knocks, pulls and strains of various body parts as Flanagan tries to stitch together a panel of 26 players for the trip north.

By all accounts Flanagan will be lucky to have more than two or three of those back for Saturday night and will have to rely on the players who soldiered through a decent O’Byrne Cup campaign, albeit one that ended frustratingly as they coughed up that eight-point lead against a more experienced Westmeath outfit.

The Johnstownbridge man is not averse to trying out new players, and that’s putting it mildly. Flanagan has handed senior debuts to no fewer than 27 players in the year since his first match in charge in last year’s league. Of those, 16 have come in the last couple of weeks and the manager clearly has a lot of faith in the youngsters he took to two All Ireland finals, winning one, at Under-20 level.

With the acknowledgement that it was “only the O’Byrne Cup”, the evidence of last Friday night suggests Kildare will have it all to do in Omagh, though that would have been the case even with his Tailteann Cup side intact and available. In a sense Tyrone is a “free hit”, with Kildare’s survival in Division 2 likely to boil down to their home games with Offaly, Derry, Meath and Louth and the trips to Cork and Cavan.

To counter that, perhaps the best time to meet Tyrone is in the opening round, while Malachy O’Rourke is still experimenting a little as he did in the McKenna Cup, where they exited to Monaghan in the semi-final.

With the transitional nature of the Kildare side, and the lack of experience particularly in defence, it’s no surprise that a number of weaknesses were evident on Friday night, ones that will keep Flanagan awake at night during the week.

He has given all three goalkeepers a game in pre-season and Cian Burke would have come into the season with the number one jersey in hand, but he had a difficult week for both Maynooth University and Kildare last week, his kick outs a particular concern.

Eoin Sheehan did well generally against Wexford other than a penalty given away for over-carrying while Didier Cordonnier, back-up keeper last year, won’t be entirely happy with his attempt to prevent Dublin’s goal in the O’Byrne Cup semi-final.

Whoever gets the nod in Omagh, with a youthful backline in front of them Flanagan will need his goalkeeper exuding confidence and keeping unforced errors to a minimum.

Speaking of the defence, there is a gaping hole down the middle of the back six and that is no surprise with the O’Grady and Hyland shaped gaps at 3 and 6. Pádraic Spillane and Eoin Lawlor, who filled those jerseys on Friday night, may have fine Kildare careers ahead of them, but they both have a lot to learn at senior level. Flanagan could really do with the likes of Tommy Gill, Jack McKevitt and James McGrath being available, even if that trio themselves are only one year into their senior careers.

Apart from the selection choices, Kildare will need to tighten up a lot at the back, or it could be a very difficult night in Omagh. The room that Luke Loughlin and Ronan Wallace got in Newbridge was disappointing to put it mildly and with Aidan O’Rourke, Damien Hendy and Davy Burke on his coaching ticket you’d hope that Flanagan, himself a defender as a player, has the wherewithal to find a solution to that.

Midfield is another area of concern. Brendan Gibbons has not convinced at county level yet despite Flanagan’s faith in him and with Kevin Feely a year older the elder statesman can’t be expected to put in a seventy-minute shift in the engine room. Dara Crowley and Daragh Mangan are untried options but perhaps Callum Bolton would be an expedient option there for now?

On paper, Kildare’s strength is in attack and picking a starting six would be an interesting exercise if all were fit. They’ll obviously need to improve on their shooting from Friday night but in Brian McLoughlin, Alex Beirne, Bolton, Ben Loakman, Eoin Cully and perhaps Darragh Swords Kildare would have a decent sextet for most games in Division 2 pending the return of the other injured score-getters.

Kildare do not have happy experiences of traveling to Tyrone, or indeed of playing the Red Hands anywhere. They have won an All-Ireland since the last time they won in the O’Neill County, in November 1927 when Paul Doyle and company were strutting their stuff in a 5-7 to 2-2 win in Dungannon.

We’ve lost on all four visits to Omagh, most recently by just one point (0-12 to 2-7) on a bitterly cold day in 2022 and irrespective of venue there’s only been one Kildare win in the last twelve clashes of the counties in all competitions, that coming in the 2012 Division 2 final in Croke Park.

You’d be reluctant ever to call a league game a “free hit” but in the circumstances a good performance and some signs that the O’Byrne Cup weaknesses are being addressed may be as much as we can realistically aspire to on this occasion.