Kildare keen to end on a high as Offaly hurlers arrive in Newbridge
Simon Lacey and his Kildare side pushed Kilkenny all the way in Round 4. Photo: INPHO/James Lawlor.
At half time on Saturday evening in Nowlan Park, Kildare hurling supporters dared to dream. A point behind to the mighty Kilkenny having played against the breeze and the Cats facing into a second half with only fourteen men.
What transpired in the second half was similar in some ways to the Galway game the week before as the Black and Amber lashed four goals past Paddy McKenna on the way to a whopping 23-point win that seemed well beyond them at the interval.
Manager Brian Dowling had hoped they’d emerge from his home county “still alive” in the Leinster Championship with Sunday’s home game against Offaly (2pm) to come but the cruel hand of fate was up to mischief in Tullamore where the Faithful men came from behind to beat misfiring Wexford by six points.
While that kept Offaly’s hopes alive of breaking into the top three ahead of either Galway or Kilkenny, at the end of the table Kildare were interested in, it left the Lilywhites at the bottom on no points with Wexford ahead of them on two.
Unfortunately, with the head-to-head rule applying and Wexford having finally worn Kildare down on the way to an eight-point win in Newbridge on the opening weekend of the championship, the fate of Dowling’s side is already sealed going into next weekend’s game.
They say there’s a glass ceiling in senior hurling. Kerry, when they were a little better than they are now, couldn’t find a way to break into the Munster closed shop, and in Leinster the Joe McDonagh Cup winners are essentially lambs to the slaughter the following year in the provincial championship.
Other than the team coming up having a couple of shock results against the “big boys” it would need one of those same traditional counties to have an almighty implosion to slip through the trapdoor.
It happened to Offaly in the first year of the round robin format in 2018, but Kilkenny, Galway, Dublin and Wexford have been permanent residents at the top table under that structure.
What to do about that glass ceiling that exists for the likes of Kildare, Carlow, Laois and Westmeath, four Leinster counties striving to spread the hurling gospel beyond the hurling pale?
For a start, perhaps Leinster should insist on elevating its own rather than playing host to Galway every year given that four of the counties striving in that secondary tier are from the province.
The same development issue doesn’t exist in Munster, as there’s only one county who aren’t in the premier competition, Kerry. Could Munster not host Galway, therefore, make it two provinces of six teams, thus freeing up another place in the Leinster round-robin for a county actually from the province?
That would make Munster far too difficult to get out of, I hear you say. That could be balanced by allowing the three top Munster teams into the Liam McCarthy series along with the top two in Leinster with fourth place in Munster playing off with third in Leinster for the final place.
Leinster would then have four traditionally strong counties with Kildare and say Laois or Carlow also getting highly competitive games each year to try to progress.
None of that is in play at the moment of course and Kildare face into a dead rubber on Sunday against an Offaly team still with those eyes on a top three place. They’ll come to Newbridge for a very different encounter than the one we envisaged at the start of the campaign.
It’s hard to know how Dowling will approach this one. You’d imagine he’ll give a few of his fringe panel members some more game time, such as reserve goalkeeper Mark Doyle, while James Burke can continue his recovery from injury ahead of the club season.
There’s still the prize of a first Leinster Championship win since 2001 (v Wicklow) at stake, a first ever over Offaly in the championship, and a first in any competition over them since the league of 1975. How we would wish for it to be about a little more than that, though.
