The Supporter: A good week for Kildare GAA

“Even the Supporter might be positive this week,” they said.

“He or she might, you never know,” I replied.

This column, you may have noticed, can get its knickers in a twist at the slightest thing. The colour of seats, the quantity of them, an advertising hoarding hanging lopsided for three years. That sort of thing.

I’m told I’m a pessimist but, as George Bernard Shaw argued, both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute. We all have our place.

There were chinks of light in the Kildare GAA world this week and it’s important we acknowledge that.

Firstly, Wednesday evening brought the appointment of the clear and obvious candidate Brian Flanagan to the senior manager role in time for the start of the Senior and Intermediate championships. Flano will be filling a few of those black notebooks he loves over the coming weekends.

Then on Thursday night, Kildare GAA caved in and allowed itself to be dragged kicking and screaming (or streaming?) into the 21st century with the news that it had done a deal with the Clubber TV organisation to broadcast live championship games online this summer.

I am not sure you can measure the impact in normal profit and loss terms either and thankfully most counties seem to be on board with the need to capture the hearts and minds of current and future members and supporters through modern media, quite apart from the ties with home it generates for overseas folk.

I did cringe a little when I saw Naas v Johnstownbridge was chosen by (or offered to) Clubber for their debut. With Johnstownbridge missing so many star names the fear was it would be a massacre that would not reflect well on Kildare football. Fair play to them for making a fight of it.

It reminded me of comments from Joe Murphy recently lauding the competitiveness of the Kildare championship. Easy to say when you’re three times county champions, maybe, but we’ll take his comments at face value and the games over the weekend at senior level were certainly tight and, by and large entertaining going by the ones I saw.

I was particularly taken by Eadestown’s win over Clane. The latter should perhaps be the closest competitors to Naas given the talent available to them, but they hadn’t the same fight or spirit as Eadestown, who it has to be said have some very good footballers.

Indeed, one of the themes of the weekend was the number of good dual players in action. Eadestown had the three Boran boys and Cian in particular impressed me as a very talented big ball player. Maynooth had Cathal McCabe in fine form, Allenwood had Johnny Byrne and Naas have one or two as well as we know.

In the past the football set-up might have had first pick of those lads but the work going into hurling development, the competitiveness of our teams and the professionalism of the county set-up means that is no longer the case.

Mind you, if I were Flano I’d still be picking one or two battles to have with Brian Dowling! After all, two of Kildare’s greatest footballers, Pat Dunney and Tommy Carew, were also two of our most renowned hurlers nationally. Different times of course.

There’s not much hurling played in Athy these days, more’s the pity, but their game with Maynooth certainly had a hurling scoreline. That was the maddest game of football I’ve seen in a long time for a senior championship match.

I can only imagine an Ulster coach (Aidan O’Rourke?) looking on as both sides played fifteen on fifteen, and players just ran freely and directly at the opposition with little or no resistance coming back at them. They were like cattle let into the field come springtime.

No doubt modern coaches would describe it as naïve, but it was a game that enthralled spectators. I wouldn’t say it was a throw back to the old days as such, as the ball wasn’t being kicked long into a big lad in the square. Some of the passing movements and shooting were sublime.

Maybe the sunshine went to players heads, maybe those tactics weren’t planned? If every team went out to play like that Jim Gavin would be out of a job. But, of course, the exception doesn’t prove the rule and if you took one hundred club games across the country over the next few weeks you might not get another five like that. Cherish it.

It was certainly a stark contrast to the Newbridge derby the night before, which thankfully Clubber didn’t take or weren’t offered. A bore fest with half the population of the town seemingly behind the ball at all times. You couldn’t even entertain yourself with the Hound of Hawkfield who seems to be on holidays or barred from the premises.

One wag joked that Flano had just resigned after watching that one and you wouldn’t blame him.

In the run-up to the senior and intermediate championships starting I’ve been out and about at a few junior games the last few weeks. I don’t recall the last junior player to get a call up to the county panel, but I would hope Flano gets to look at a few players from that championship.

Grange are a fine team backboned by the Bergin brothers and I saw plenty about midfielder Conall and inside forward Fionn in particular that warrants a decent trial at county level. Ross Harris with Castlemitchell is already on the radar of course from playing with the under-20s and he is the sort of forward, pacey but tall, athletic and hard-working, that Kildare perhaps lack. Glen Carter with Cappagh is another who caught my eye and has scored two points from wing-back in each of his team’s two games.

We’ll continue our scouting on behalf of Flano over the coming months. Best of luck to him!

Cill Dara Abú