Kildare 0-11 Fermanagh 0-5: AAAAARGH! A game of two halves, the first of which you'll be very glad you missed. Twenty-five long, scoreless minutes of tantric football followed by a stingy drizzle of scores. Fermanagh and Kildare having bad days in Croker on a greasy day. Does it get any worse?
The lads will get their grants come the winter. We'll never get that time back again though.
When three minutes of additional time were added on, the attendance filed an appeal to the CAC and the referee was asked to reconsider his decision to have thrown in the ball at all.
The condensed version of events will be that Kildare won a game both themselves and Fermanagh looked intent on leaving behind them. Fermanagh in particular had one of those days when they brought the quality of being unafraid to miss to a previously unseen level of valour in the area of inaccuracy.
Four wides in the first four minutes for Fermanagh proved to be an altogether too ambitious rate of profligacy even they could not sustain. They managed their sixth wide in the sixth minute but by the 11th minute had registered only eight and had to be content with 10 wides by half-time, a still impressive tally only slightly tainted by their two scores.
The fiesta of wides was backed up of course by a series of shots that dropped short, three good rattlings of the woodwork and a missed penalty.
Of course it isn't fair to single out Fermanagh. Certainly they were pioneers, registering eight wides before Kildare had one. The first quarter of an hour was like a conditioned game of backs and forwards where the forwards had agreed not to score, but Kildare became equally creative in avoiding scoring.
On the quarter-hour mark Eamon Callaghan was dragged down close to the Fermanagh goal. The Kildare forwards looked at each other like men being asked to play Russian roulette before John Doyle reluctantly stepped up and hit a tame shot to Ronan Gallagher's left. This was followed almost immediately by a wide from Callaghan. Kildare were happy to get down and dirty too.
The stalemate, which had become almost hypnotic, was broken just 15 seconds short of the 25th minute by Pádraig O'Neill and an intervention that made us gasp as he hoofed the ball over from in front of the posts about 30 yards out. The ironic cheer was followed by an admiring hush. Behold his mighty boot!
After that of course all hell broke loose. Score followed score at such a bewildering rate that by half-time Kildare had three of them and Fermanagh had two and we felt wrung out by the excitement of it all.
Fermanagh's short game is a pretty thing but it has left them short of serious scoring capability.
Kildare at least were willing to vary their play a little and the application of boot to football proved a novel innovation they used well, particularly when taking the ball out of their half-back line.
Kildare started the second half like a team determined to redeem the game's reputation as well as their own. Doyle, who had a fine match, scored a point almost from the throw-in.
James Kavanagh followed up with another within 60 seconds.
Fermanagh gave a brief suggestion they were game for the battle by riposting with two points of their own via Tom Brewster and Shaun Doherty.
Much of the fluent possession football which had supported their early dominance was forgotten now and it became clear a win would have to be ground out.
Fermanagh's last real chance to achieve that came with 15 minutes left. Mark Little dropped a 45 short, and then two minutes later midfielder Mark Murphy went rampaging through and found himself with only Enda Murphy, the Kildare goalkeeper, to beat. Doherty was on his outside screaming for a pass with the net gaping in front of him but Murphy in a moment of panic rammed the ball at the keeper.
A goal would have given Fermanagh a one-point lead. The next four points were scored by Kildare.
Kildare celebrated their win lustily, as well they might. Back in early summer when they were ushered out of the Leinster championship without demur by Wicklow, a run to the All-Ireland quarter-finals seemed a remote possibility and the wisdom of appointing a tyro manager like Kieran McGeeney was questioned.
McGeeney has brought the Lilywhites to an unlikely altitude and has done so without being noticed.
His reputation as one of the game's serious thinkers is assured for a while yet.
FERMANAGH: R Gallagher; S Goan, S McDermott, P Sherry; D Kelly, R McCluskey, T McElroy; M McGrath, M Murphy; C McElroy, T Brewster (0-1), R Keenan (0-1); E Maguire (0-1), L McBarron, M Little (0-1 a free). Subs: S Doherty (0-1) for L McBarron (22 mins), S McCabe for C McElroy (39 mins), P Cadden for T Brewster (61 mins).
KILDARE: E Murphy; M O'Flaherty, K O'Neill, A McLoughlin; E Bolton (0-1), M Foley, M Scanlon; K Brennan, D Earley (0-1); J Kavanagh (0-2), P O'Neill (0-1), E Callaghan; A Smith, G White, J Doyle (0-5, two frees and a 45). Subs: M Conway for E Callaghan (45 mins), D Flynn (0-1) for K Brennan (59 mins), R Sweeney for A Smyth (69 mins), A Rainbow for E Bolton (70 mins), D Brennan for A McLoughlin (72 mins).
Referee: R Mangan (Kerry).
