Brian Dowling on new Joe McDonagh Cup format and Kildare’s 2027 prospects

After the dust settled in Kilkenny with Henry Shefflin the man left standing, Brian Dowling was confirmed to remain in charge of Kildare and attention has already turned to what is to come in the 2027 season for the Short Grass County.

“It's not going to be easy next year. It's going to be tough games and we're going to have to be ready. The lads are going to have to train very hard and we will. We look forward to the Joe McDonagh next year and the new format with the second and third team meeting in a semi-final. We'll look forward to that now. It's an exciting year ahead,” Dowling said.

The McDonagh Cup adjustments mean the first-place team after the round robin phase advances directly to the final, where they face the semi-final (contested between second and third place) winner. Both teams in the final earn promotion to the Leinster or Munster Senior Hurling Championship championship for the following year.

Kildare secured Allianz Hurling League Division 1B status with three wins in the second-tier in 2026 but dropped out of the Leinster SHC after consecutive defeats.

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Dowling added, “I said all along the league was absolutely huge for us. That was the target and if we didn’t achieve Division 1B status it would have been a failure in my eyes. I think if we stayed up in Leinster we would have shocked absolutely everybody, although it was our aim. We got three brilliant wins in 1B.

“Overall we won four games out of 11 and I think anybody would have said that they were the games that we were going to win. Any of the games that we lost, I don’t think anybody was expecting us to win them. We wanted to take a big scalp in Leinster, we hoped we would do that and the biggest opportunity was against Wexford. That game went fairly close at the end, the rest of them were over before the end of it.”

The Lilies first year in Leinster was a baptism of fire but it didn’t stop them from turning in solid showings against top opposition, namely against now All-Ireland finalists Galway. Kildare’s undoing was their inability to sustain their initial level of performance for long enough in games against the top sides in the province.

“There were some brilliant performances and I said in the dressing room to the players after the Offaly game how proud I was standing on the sideline against the likes of Galway and even prouder when you see what Galway have done since that game,” Dowling recalled.

“To be 12 points up against Galway at one stage, we really had them worried and it is just a pity that we couldn't see it out for longer against them. But they are a top quality side and unfortunately in Leinster we met a lot of quality teams and we just couldn’t sustain it but there were a lot of good performances that the lads will have learnt a lot from.”

The difficulty for those teams making the jump from McDonagh to the top level of hurling has been an ongoing issue for many years but one that the Kildare boss explained is being discussed at the highest level.

He said, “It's hard (moving up). It's hard because you're not used to it. You need games at that level to improve and get better and get faster. It's not easy. I know there is definitely talk at the moment. I don't know what's going to happen, I doubt anything more will happen for 2027. I know Nicky Brennan is chairing the board there for Leinster and he's trying to change something. Whether to go with eight teams and two groups of four. Something like that maybe. I don't know.

“Teams staying up for two years? I'm not really sure how that works with relegation and everything like that. I definitely think if we could maybe get it up to eight teams. I think that would probably benefit us. It'd keep Laois, Carlow, Kildare or whoever you had up there for a bit longer. It would give them that better chance to get used to that level.”