Kildare supporters just as welcome here as anyone else, provided that they stick to the basic ethos of play the ball, not the man.
Sad and all as it is to admit, I know all too well what embarrassing is. Embarrassing is what we saw last year against Down, an utterly dishevelled and disinterested display where we were outclassed and outfought. Embarrassing is what we got in Kiltoom this year against the Rossies when a very poor team made absolute monkeys of us.
Embarrassing is NOT when Kildare build up an early lead due to a couple of mistakes (look back on the footage on RTE.ie and you'll see that cheap turnovers accounted for 1-3 of the first 1-4) and Offaly kept fighting to the death with a young team. I was very disappointed after Sunday since I thought we'd be a lot closer both in terms of the scoreline and the performance, but embarrassed I was not. I've watched and played on teams that simply came off second best and as long as lads don't stop trying, that's all you can ask.
It would be very easy here to get annoyed and to take cheap shots at this Kildare football team but I won't do that - however my opinion still stands. They are a very committed, strong, well prepared team who played good simple football with purpose and controlled aggression. I don't think that they are a magically talented bunch, however the fact that they performed so well without a plethora of Gooch Cooper or Michael Meehan style players is a credit to them and to their dedication.
I would not be so blasé as to say that they took their foot off the pedal - I think that they did what leading teams do, which is to perhaps not go bald headed for every ball in the back line since conceding a goal would have been a blow, conceding an occasional point was not.
OAK TREE wrote:
They took off there best players and put on 5 average guys and they still knocked on a few extra points to keep themselves comfortable...
Comments like this only make you look stupid. Kildare replaced the two forwwards out of six who didn't score on the day, as well as a midfielder who was clearly exhausted and two defenders who were arguably the worst performers out of their backline. Kildare's best performers for me were Daryl Flynn, John Doyle, Roli Sweeney, Hugh McGrillen, Michael Conway and to a lesser extent Alan Smith, James Kavanagh and yes, Dermot Earley - when he wasn't struggling with the pace. None of these were taken off and that was no surprise, because Kieran McGeeney, unlike yourself, knew that the right thing to do was to finish out the game and take no chances.
OAK TREE wrote:
If tom cribben thinks thats a good performance or that they matched kildare then they'll never do anything successful.
Neither Tom Cribbin nor anyone on this site thinks anything of the sort. However he would hardly be doing the cause any favours by lambasting his players in front of the journalists or the television cameras. Whatever he has to say about players and their performances I've no doubt he'll say to their faces, not in public for national digestion.
Kevin Egan. Signed out of respect for players and all involved with Offaly.
