5 positives and 5 negatives to take from Kildare's unfruitful Division 1 league campaign

Positives

The narrow defeats

Before Kildare’s relegation to Division 2 became more or less a formality, the Lilywhites were able to at least bloody the noses of their opponents in the first four games. A seven-point defeat to Dublin was about par for expectations on the opening night of the league, but the fact they led at the break was at least encouraging.

The two home losses to Monaghan and Tyrone were ultimately the crucial factors in their relegation, but they could have won those ties on another day. Kildare showed enough tactical acumen, skill and physicality to compete with their northern counterparts, but couldn’t get the job done. When they travelled to Donegal it was a case of more of the same, though the bad luck was amplified. Eoin Doyle was sent off for receiving two yellow cards for not having a gumshield in, while the goal that Donegal bagged in the second half was down to a rare Mark Donnellan mistake.

Fine margins, and all that.

Flynn’s emergence

In that Donegal game there was a remarkable debut for Celbridge youngster Kevin Flynn as a half-time substitute for the injured Cian O’Donoghue. Of all the players called into the senior panel for the league, the biggest question marks from the outside were over Flynn, who hadn’t a big underage pedigree to back him up.

The 21-year-old scored a superb point early in the second half, and his cameo was enough to earn him a start against Mayo. That may have been a disappointing team performance, but Flynn once again held his own and showed his attacking intent by driving at the Mayo defence and scoring two points from play. He started the subsequent games against Kerry and Galway and looked bright on both occasions, with his surging runs again catching the eye.

A nominee for Club Footballer of the Year in 2017, Flynn has made the transition to intercounty football seamlessly.

The experience of others

While nobody would have wanted relegation at the beginning of the campaign, it certainly won’t be the death knell of this Kildare team.

In 2017 both Roscommon and Cavan tumbled through the Division 1 trap door, but both of those teams are bouncing straight back into the top tier. Roscommon even managed to win a Connacht title on the back of a Division 1 campaign where they won just a single game.

Kildare proved last year that they are more than able for life in Division 2, but it will be ultra-competitive in 2019 with Fermanagh and Armagh joining the ranks, while Donegal, Cork, Clare, Meath and Tipperary make up the rest of the teams. The Lilywhites haven’t enjoyed a stay of more than one year in the same division since 2013, so signs are that they it could be either up or down for this team, but hopefully it’s the former.

Kelly’s resurgence

A career that seems to be back in the ascendancy for the dedicated Two Mile House clubman, and there are few who won’t delight in seeing Kelly back to his best. He won an All-Star award in his first year as an intercounty footballer when he helped Kildare to the All-Ireland semi-final in 2010, but a combination of injuries and a changing backline over the intervening years had disrupted his form.

Kelly started just three of Kildare’s 12 league and championship matches in 2017 as Ollie Lyons and Mick O’Grady nailed down the corner-back spots, while Keith Cribbin and Johnny Byrne were preferred on the wings. The absence of Lyons this year has given the 29-year-old an opening that he has taken gleefully, and he has arguably been Kildare’s best performer in the league.

His man-marking job on Peter Harte in the loss to Tyrone was absolutely superb and was possibly the highlight performance of any Kildare player this season, while he has also acquitted himself in the other league games.

Still the best of the rest

There is little chance that Dublin will be upskittled in Leinster once again this year, meaning that every other team will be scrapping it out for a place alongside the All-Ireland champions in their inevitable accent to an eighth provincial crown in a row.

Kildare stepped up to take on Jim Gavin’s men last year, and despite their relegation from Division 1, they are the best placed to do so again this summer. Apart from Dublin and Kildare, Meath are the only other team in the top two tiers of league football, and they have shown little progress under Andy McEntee as they barely scraped survival in Division 2 this year.

Five Leinster counties will be in Division 3 next year as Westmeath and Longford missed out on promotion, Offlay survived a relegation battle, and Carlow and Laois moved up from Division 4. There is absolutely nothing to fear from any of these sides for Kildare, and with Dublin and Meath on the other side of the draw in Leinster, making it back to a Croke Park decider is well within the Lilywhites’ grasp.

Even with a defeat to Dublin, it would make getting to the ‘Super Eight’ much easier.

Negatives

That losing streak

By the time Kildare take on either Louth or Carlow in the Leinster quarter-final on May 26/27 it will have been around 49 weeks since the Lilywhites last won a competitive game. The losing streak has saw Kildare go down to 11 defeats in succession across three different competitions, with the nadir beginning with the defeat to Dublin in the Leinster final and concluding on the final day of this year’s league against Galway.

In recent times we’ve seen Down go on an almost unfathomable losing streak that lasted 21 months, and the Mourne men proved that the habit was hard to kick until finally getting a win in January 2017.

Kildare will be favourites against whoever they face in the Leinster quarter-final, but their opponents will certainly hold the momentum going into the game.

Breakthrough struggles

Kevin Flynn has come into the Kildare panel and shown that he is up for the challenge of playing intercounty football, but the Celbridge man has been the rare success story of the league. A number of players were called into Cian O’Neill’s squad for the 2018 season, some were cut before the league and some who will be cut before the championship starts.

Of the new faces to debut for Kildare during the current campaign, Luke Flynn, Jimmy Hyland, Aaron O’Neill and Kevin Flynn have all been granted opportunities to start. They undoubtedly have the potential and talent to have long intercounty careers, but it’s difficult to imagine too many different faces making an impression in the championship compared to last year.

The Moorefield contingent of James Murray, Eanna O’Connor and Mark Dempsey will all stake their claims, but O’Neill has been unable to really test them in a game that matters so far.

Loss of individual form

It is kind of hard to judge which players are playing to their potential and what players are underperforming when a team goes on such a losing run, but there are certainly a lot of players who have been out of form throughout the course of the league.

Kildare conceded 6-112 across their seven league games, averaging just under 19 points per game. In 2017 – against admittedly poorer quality opposition – they conceded 3-94, a rate of just over 13 points per game. They were always likely to leak more scores than they did in Division 2, but the defence has looked porous at times when teams have ran at them with pace.

It’s not very different up front either, as Kildare’s lethal streak on front of goal that saw the Lilywhites clock up 11-101 in seven games has plummeted to 6-83 this season as they have struggled against more robust defences. In the games where they have amassed impressive tallies, it seems to have come at the detriment of their solidity at the back. A balance needs to be struck.

Forward failings

Whatever the issue is with Kildare this year, whether it be the increase in the strength of the opposition or a mixture of injuries to players, the forward line has not clicked as Cian O’Neill would have liked.

The Lilywhites’ top scorer in the league is midfielder Kevin Feely who has clocked up 0-23, but only three of those have come from play. Their highest scoring forward is Daniel Flynn, with the Johnstownbridge man contributing a highly impressive 3-10 from play this year, with the standout performance coming against Kerry when he scored 0-6. Aside from that, the options up front have not fired on all cylinders. Niall Kelly has scored 1-5 in the league but has not been as potent or influential as usual, while Kildare’s next highest scorer after that, Ben McCormack, is unlikely to be involved for the summer.

Paddy Brophy has been moved around and mostly played at wing-forward where he doesn’t affect the game as much as he can, while the two corner-forward posts have been chopped and changed throughout. Some blend in the forward line has to be established before their championship opener in May.

Injury issues

Cian O’Donoghue missed the back end of the league after putting in some promising displays in the opening round as a back injury ruled him out. Kevin Feely left Tralee in a protective boot after doing damage to his ankle in the loss to Kerry, ruling him out of training for quite some time. Neill Flynn hasn’t played for the county since the opening round in the league when he tore his hamstring against Dublin.

All of those injuries are not likely to be an issue on the final weekend in May, but they do at least provide a form of disruption in Kildare’s preparations.