Feely backs Kildare to rescue season as Leinster Championship comes into focus

As far as the art of fielding goes, there are few better to have reached for the skies on a GAA pitch over the last decade than Kevin Feely.

But as the Kildare captain acknowledges, that is an art that has changed significantly in recent times.

In February of this year, former Kildare manager Kieran McGeeney created national headlines with his description of midfield battles under the new rules.

“There is no skill in it, it’s just pure piggery. It depends on what way the momentum is going. It’s hard to shake that when it is going against you.

“People find it exciting, so I can’t see it changing,” McGeeney was quoted as saying following a Division 1 defeat to Roscommon.

Perhaps not surprisingly for somebody who seems to relish that side of the game, it is not a point of view that Feely particularly sides with.

“It’s completely different,” said the Athy man.

“It’s not even similar to what it was when I started, it’s a different kind of game. Obviously, with the old rules, the recent old rules, you were maybe contesting three or four long kick-outs a game and now it’s closer to 30 or 40. I love it. We have a lot of lads on the panel that absolutely love that side of things,” he added.

The Kildare kick-out, in particular, was the topic of much commentary during a disappointing league campaign that ultimately ended with an immediate return to Division 3 following last year’s promotion.

Feely said there was no lack of preparation going into that side of the game, but he feels a lot of teams are struggling with it.

“It’s way harder to win your own kick-out now than it used to be and that’s forced teams and coaches to come up with a lot more innovative ways of winning your own ball. Just watching games, and within our own games, you’re seeing so many different tactics being used to try to secure primary possession, particularly against big zonal presses, which make it really, really difficult.

“There’s way more thinking going into the kick-outs than what I would have started out with, but also way more contests than what I would have finished up with under the old rules. Lots more thinking and a lot more contests, and I love both sides of that,” he said.

With so many contests around the middle, high fliers like Feely now go into games with a target on their back. Oppositions know how difficult it is to compete against somebody as good as Feely in the air, so the focus can be on blocking his path or trying to prevent him from taking flight. That sort of attention was something Feely struggled with initially, until he saw it happening across the board.

“There wasn’t that level of physical contact or screening or blocking happening around the middle before. It tended, more often than not, to be a one v one battle for the ball in the air, but that’s very much different now.

“Every single team in the country is looking to screen or block the opposition’s main jumpers and allow their own jumpers a free go at it. Then other teams are trying to stop their screeners from screening our jumpers, so that’s where the scrums happen. It can turn into a little bit of a maul, but I think teams will continue to do that.

“There’s probably a little bit of a grey area in the rules in terms of what’s allowed from a screening and blocking point of view and maybe something for the FRC to look at, in terms of tidying up what should and shouldn’t be allowed, but I’ve absolutely no issue with any of that.

“I think there are ways of fighting through it and ways of working around it, and you just have to make sure you’re good enough to adapt.

“Every team’s midfielders are getting the same level of treatment. If there are two 6’3” or 6’4” lads in a team, they’re not going to be allowed to jump cleanly at the ball, and that’s just something you have to accept now.

“I was probably more frustrated with it last year, but now I see that it’s happening to everyone, I can accept it and just figure out different ways to secure the ball,” said Feely.

His ability in the air is not just useful around the middle of the field. There are stages of games where Feely is pushed onto the edge of the square to try to create havoc in the goalmouth.

“We worked on that a good bit last year, and with the club, and got a good bit of joy out of it as well. I would have liked to have had more opportunity this year to work on that side of things, but injuries didn’t really allow it.

“If we see teams doing what Donegal did, bringing their keeper out to mark a full-forward and pushing out a sweeper, you’d like to think that would open up opportunities for deeper passes in, past the 21. If you’ve got strong ball-winners there, that’s something we’d try to take advantage of.

“In fairness, our full-forward line is well capable of doing that, with the likes of Alex Beirne and Brian McLaughlin. They’re brilliant lads in the air anyway. Often, I’m not needed in there, we can trust them to win it on their own, but it’s definitely another part of the game that I really enjoy,” he said.

Although he turns 34 later this year, there are no signs of Feely’s importance to the team diminishing. There were other factors, of course, but the bare facts state that the only two games he completed during this year’s Division 2 campaign were the two in which Kildare achieved results. His absence was keenly felt in defeats to Cavan and Louth in particular.

The 2025 season was a hugely satisfying one for Feely, as he lifted the Tailteann Cup on the steps of the Hogan Stand and then helped Athy to a Leinster final, but it was a gruelling year too. The county season rolled straight into club football and then straight into a new inter-county campaign again. A longer break would probably have been preferable, but retirements and other departures meant the squad was stretched and Feely was needed.

“It was maybe not unfortunate, you want to do as well with your club as you possibly can, but I know what the management team would have liked was to give those lads more of a rest than we were able to. With the amount of retirements we had, we didn’t have the luxury of resting the Sallins lads and the Athy lads as much as we would have liked.

“That meant it turned into a very long, continuous season. I got a couple of weeks off over Christmas, which was lovely, but maybe in hindsight, coming off the back of another muscle injury, I could have taken a bigger break. Like I said, though, we probably didn’t have the luxury of being able to do that this year,” said Feely.

He is hopeful the injury that ruled him out of the final round defeat to Louth will have cleared up in time for Sunday’s Championship opener. After the progress made during Brian Flanagan’s first year in charge, that momentum has been checked by relegation. However, Feely said the team are looking forward to proving some of the doubters wrong with a strong Championship run, starting this weekend.

“It’s not the straight line trajectory we were hoping for, it’s a bigger bump in the road than we wanted, 100 per cent. There’s no question about that. For Flano and the management team, being in Division 3 in their third year was not part of the plan, but the road to success is never easy and very rarely straight.

“Next year, they’ll have to think about that and work on it, but this year is very much alive and well. We can rescue it very easily with a good Championship and a strong Leinster campaign. There’s been a big emphasis in our training camp on switching our mindset to focus on the present and what’s important for the Leinster Championship.

“The bare facts are hard to look at, relegation and having to work back to the Sam Maguire next year, but if we can produce two massive performances now and reach the Leinster final, everyone would be back on board again. That would completely alter the perspective on the season,” he said.

Relegation may have altered the roadmap, but it has not dimmed the ambition. With Leinster now firmly in their sights, Feely and Kildare see an opportunity not to dwell on what has passed, but to define what this season still can become, starting this weekend.