Pain of previous defeats is driving Sallins' push for Leinster glory

Sallins have caught the eye everywhere they have gone this year.

A Keogh Cup win was followed by reaching the Division 1 semi-finals in the League and their path through the Kildare and Leinster Championships so far has been astonishing as they brushed aside all in front of them.

The one remaining question was how would they cope with when the pressure in the pressure of a tight battle. We got our answer in the Leinster semi-final when Clara scored a goal early in the second half to go three points up.

Was this the time that Sallins would crumble, as they have in the past?

Not a chance, this iteration of the Sallins team is very different to the teams of the past but only because they have been moulded by their past, as wing forward Cian Grimes explains.

“As a team we sat down and tried to pinpoint what had gone wrong, to try put a reason behind every defeat we have in the recent past and try to explain it ourselves. In 2022, we were maybe a touch young, it was the first year on the senior panel for a lot of us and we lost that year to Castledermot. In 2023, we lost to Monasterevin and I think that we year we bought into the hype. We were told we were going to be doing things and I think we nearly expected it to happen. In 2024 against Caragh, we thought it was our year and we thought everything would fall into place. This year I really think we made it our year. We’ve trained from January with 40 odd players at every session, usually at a club like Sallins you might get that at the start of the year but it drops off and by the end you have 23, 24 “We are playing internal games with five subs on each team and those games are a really high standard, they are the strongest games we have played pretty much all year. Lads really want to win those games, they are so competitive. We play them at a Championship pace with Championship intensity, it’s not going through the motions. In previous years we probably did that, you’d know it was a training game because lads wouldn’t work as hard or put the running in off the ball but these games, there’s times when you think you won’t get away from the lad you’re marking and they are at a higher intensity than you would expect at the weekend,” said Grimes.

That intensity is set by their impressive manager Jonathan Daniels, the Wicklow man who has had a big impact during his two years in the club, but Grimes said the players had a lot to do with it too.

“I have to give Jonathan credit for that. He definitely sets those standards but I do think the players drive that as well ourselves. We know what it is like to lose, we’ve dealt with complete hurt over the last three years, labelled as bottlers, went in against Castldermot and lost an eight point lead, then we had the embarrassment of losing to Monastervevin the following year and then we just had the disappointment of losing to Caragh. We were 0-8 to 0-1 down at half time and were just poor that. It’s definitely a mixture of both, the players drove that standards knowing what has happened in the last few year and just knowing definitively that we do not want that to happen again,” said Grimes.

Sallins are looking to become the third successive Kildare team to win this competition after Allenwood and Caragh and Grimes said that once the Kildare title was in the bag, they looked to see what they needed to do to follow in their footsteps.

“Our goal was always Kildare and anything after that was complete bonus territory. We wanted to get out of Intermediate and get into the top ranks like we are in the league and really compete in the Senior Championship as well. If we had won in 2022 or 2023 we would have gone and been one of those team just trying to stay up but I really think next year we can compete. You see this year reaching a Division 1 semi-final without Colm Dalton or Luke Killian, we missed Mangan a lot during the league, Eoin McConnon was in Galway. We didn’t have a lot of our spine players and still reach the Division 1 semi-finals. We’re going into Senior next year to keep hitting those standards and really drive on. We’ve been watching Allenwood and Caragh in Leinster the last few years, the year Allenwood won Leinster we beat them by eight in the group stages, we had beaten Caragh in the Keogh Cup the year they went on to win and we saw how well both those teams had done,” he said.

“After we had won Kildare we began looking at Leinster and we really did see it as a possibility. We’ve taken it game by game and he haven’t looked past any opponent, same as we will do with Tubberclair but it’s definitely a dream that is close to reality now and we know that we are just 60 minutes of football away from becoming Leinster champions. It’s a position we always wanted to be in during our football,” added Grimes.

Grimes the player is not the only one in his family playing a huge role in Sallins wonderful season so far, as selector Ian Swan explains.

“Keith, Cian’s father, took a lot of these lads from under 7, under 8s. He would have been looking after them as a mentor and he kind of moulded a lot of them. We referenced this at our recent AGM, this team wasn’t built in the last day or two, or even over the last year or two. This was a 15 year project. To have Keith involved, he is a selector and kitman, with that link is hugely important. He has a great knowledge of football but he’s been hugely important in bringing in that group of players around Cian’s age – James Dalton and a few others like that who are in that 2003 age group,” said Swan.

The younger Grimes said the bond that was developed on their underage teams is helping the current senior team.

“I came on to the panel 2021, when I was in my last year as minor. I think that’s what helped us but also maybe created a rocky road. A lot of the minor teams coming up, I would have played with James Dalton and Daragh Mangan coming up. There were probably three or four minors going straight in to be starters with the seniors. It’s great to see all those young players coming in but it also upset the balance of the team. We had good individuals but just weren’t used to playing with each other. We came up against Kilcock in a semi-final in 2021 and they were just a better team. We weren’t ready, weren’t mature enough for it. We had nine players that started in 2022 and 16 on the panel that are still there today so we have gelled and changed from good individuals into a good team and that’s the difference really,” he said.

The buzz around the village since the Kildare final has grown to the point where the Leinster Final has overtaken Christmas as the main topic this week and Grimes wants to deliver one more big win for the supporters before the end of the year.

“We try to focus on the football but I couldn’t help but hear the crowd when the second goal went and really have a look at the stand with five or six minutes to go and see the amount of faces that I knew the amount of support we had. These are people who are maybe from the village, maybe played for the club in the past and are out supporting us. Some are 60, 70 years of age are out supporting us. They haven’t seen us win a whole lot but it’s great to be representing them now. You see the joy that every win brings and extending our journey means so much to the village. It’s shows that we are far more than just a GAA team. We are bringing a whole village and if we can win on Sunday it will be the best day of our lives, not only for the players but for a lot of people there watching us,” he said.