Hyland looking forward to getting back to his club following league final disappointment

Kildare full-back David Hyland is focusing on getting back to his club and shaking off the disappointment of losing another league final in Croke Park, and he's hoping the rest of his teammates can do the same.

The Athy man hardly put a foot wrong against Galway in the Division 2 decider, keeping Gary Sice scoreless from open play and rendering the veteran Corofin forward ineffectual for the most part. He even got up the field to throw a neat shimmy and slot over a superb point from 40 metres, but he still ended up on the losing side in Kildare's second league final defeat in the space of a year.

"It was a very difficult result to take," he told KildareNow.

"We really geared up to go and win this one, it was probably our own fault that we lost the game because we had so many turnovers. Our own mistakes really led to their fortunes, and it's something we'll need to knuckle down on before championship."

"Hopefully, in hindsight, it will give us a bit more inspiration to get back to Croke Park as soon as we can."

"We knew that they were going to put a lot of men behind the ball because last week they had 14 men back, so it was something we kind of were aware of. [The reason] I was out so far was because we had match ups and I was told to pick up [Gary] Sice and I was further out than usual. Usually it's Ollie but that's the way it worked out really."

The Kildare players won't play a competitive game until June 4 when they take on the winners of Laois and Longford in the Leinster quarter-final, and each one of them will be available to their clubs for a full round of league games this coming Wednesday.

Hyland is looking forward to getting back to lining out with Athy, and he outlined how it will give Kildare manager Cian O'Neill a chance to look at some players around the club scene who might make an impact at intercounty level.

"First of all the big thing is to go away for a week with the club. We have three games in a row so playing well with the club and stepping up as a leader is my big priority for the next three weeks as with everyone else that's here. Another huge one is to get lads back from injury; we're missing the two Flynns, Bolto is only back from injury as well so we need everyone with a full bill of health if we want to progress and hopefully we can stay injury free and a lot of lads can stand up in club games and give some headaches to Cian going forward."

While losing to Galway was of course disappointing, Kildare's achievement in earning promotion was a sizable one as they were considered big outsiders before the league started. They'll be rubbing shoulders with the likes of Kerry, Mayo and Dublin next year, a test Hyland is looking forward to.

At the start of the league I suppose nobody would have thought we'd be there, but we just took every game at a time. Going forward you're going to learn so much in Division 1 regardless of how you get on, but we'd be confident at that time of year to take any team on our day, but like today, if we don't perform we'll be beaten. But it's really something to look forward to, marking the best forwards in the country and playing the best teams, so it can only improve us.