THERE WERE several small placards posted around the walls of the Kildare dressingroom, with short, catchy instructions such as “Be Ruthless”, or “Make the Right Decision”. Our first thought was these must be reminders of how to deal with the media, until we spotted another: “Be Honest.”
No one could accuse Kieran McGeeney of not being honest, but he was always going to be somewhat devious in his choice of words when assessing a performance of this magnitude. No county likes to build the hype like Kildare and part of McGeeney’s job is ensuring his players don’t believe it.
“People will be reading into this in different ways,” he said, “but the fact of the matter is you don’t get anything extra for winning well. We got on a roll, and pushed on. That’s encouraging. But that’s really the only way you can look at it.
“I know if we played Laois tomorrow we could get a different result. But when you get your chances you have to take them, and the good teams do that. Tyrone, Kerry, Dublin.
“When they get on top they put teams away, and for us to compete with those teams, we have to do that. In times of the past we didn’t do that.”
He wasn’t entirely devoid of praise and acclaim of his team: “The happiest thing there really was the work-rate. For the full 70 minutes. Even when they got ahead they kept working.
“And to beat the good teams that’s what you have to do. They stopped Laois from getting any momentum, especially from the half-back line. And that was very encouraging. But we know if we take the foot off the pedal we’re not going to get a performance in the Leinster final. The way to success is hard work, as well as talent. But according to most analysts out there, there is no talent left in Gaelic football.”
McGeeney swiftly changed tack by putting some pressure on Croke Park to allow Kildare the chance to test out Croke Park – an advantage Dublin clearly have. “We’d be hoping to get a bit of a training session up there. Somebody will probably tell us no. I would like us to train there. To say the pitch is not available? It’s not like we’re going to dig it up. We should look after our own as well as other sports.”
For Seán Dempsey, the Laois manager, there wasn’t much consolation, even if Kildare’s performance had surpassed even the most optimistic predictions.
“No, that wasn’t supposed to happen,” he started. “We thought we were well up for the game, and prepared very well for it. Their first goal came, and we didn’t respond to it. We stood off, let Kildare play ball the way they can.
“If you do that against a team of their quality you’re always going to get punished. That’s the story of the night really. But it’s a mental thing, really, when a team scores a goal like that, and you don’t respond.
“We have to show more character. We let the game go from us too early. That first goal kind of came against the run of play. When that happens, you expect your team to lift themselves, and battle into it again. I think part of it was our own concentration. We’re better than that. But you have to show some consistency, and that wasn’t there tonight.”
There is, of course, the qualifier road to look forward to, yet Dempsey is back to square one in every sense.
“We’re in late June already, but this has to be addressed in some way and, hopefully, we’ll still be able to do that.
“We don’t seem to be beaten by a couple of points anymore, unlike a few years ago.
“Everyone has been trying very hard. But you can’t easily replace experienced players, and that may be a consideration. But tonight was certainly an experience for a lot of lads and, hopefully, they’ll learn from it.”
