New Kildare senior football manager sets out his stall

While Brian Flanagan and his new managemente team of Kildare senior football team have not yet began the process of talking to players, he, Flanagan, believes that the feed-back he has received since his appointment has been positive and encouraging.

Meeting with the local press this evening, Wednesday 4 September, the manager said he feels there is a "real energy and want to see things moving in the right direction and from that point of view it has been a good couple of weeks,"

The maanger added that he has not begun the process of contacting players but once Round 3 of the SFC is over in two weeks time that process will begin; adding that "we have been watching a lot of players; watching a lot of games in the championship so we have indeed been very busy."

Going through his management team the Johnstownbridge man confirmed that Aidan O'Rourke will be the Lead Coach; Damian Hendy, Assistant Coach and Daryl Flynn selector.

On the S&C side Neil Walsh (Santry Clinic) will lead that; Dean Ryan Asst S&C; on the analysis side John Buckley (IRFU) will lead the performance analysis team; Kay Timmons who has been with the U20s for the past few years is going to support; and Steve Sheerin will be staying on as analyst.

On the nutirition side of things Laura Keely will be remaining on;as will  Breffni O'Donnell as phyio; Owen Gallagher as the team doctor while Emer Fogarty will be the sports psychologist.

The Johnstownbridge club man said that while "we all know we have had very good success in Kildare at under age, the challenge has been transitioning those players into senior county players and I believe a lot of that step-up is around athletic conditining and strengthening in general and that area was always going to be a huge importance to me in fulling out the backroom team.

The manager added that "I worked with Neil in 2016, had a very good realtionship with him since and I know he is very well regarded."

When asked if he was intending to hold 'trial' games he immediately said "no, the reason is that time is of the essence now but we feel that as a management, we have a very, very good handle on what is happening out there,

"Damian has been involved with the minors over the past few years; I have been involved with the U20s and know the players that are out there and what is coming through while Daryl is currently a selector with Moorefield so all three of us would have a very close eye on the club championship; we have gone to an amount of club games from junior, intermediate and senior level and we will continue to do that.

"I think the greatest trial that any player can play is with his club; if you play against your peers it is all on the line, and we will see that in the next number of weeks; that is the trial, fellas competing agains each other; so we won't have open trials.

"We will start with an extended squad, in our around the fifty mark and work with that but all based on what we see in the next couple of weeks.

The full interview with Brian and his selectors will appear in the next edition of the Leinster Leader.