"It's just noise"- O'Neill not worried about McGeeney's history with Kildare ahead of Croke Park showdown

Kildare manager Cian O'Neill says that he and his backroom team have been busy delving through footage of Armagh's four championship games to date in preparation of tomorrow night's All-Ireland qualifier against the Orchard County.

Armagh have come through the qualifiers in rather impressive fashion as wins over Fermanagh, Westmeath and Tipperary have followed their disappointing Ulster Championship exit to Down, and they certainly have a manager who is no stranger to successful runs through the backdoor system. They have averaged 18 points per game across the last three qualifier victories, so they obviously present a potent attacking force for Kildare to deal with.

“We’ve done a huge amount of work on Armagh now,” stated O’Neill last Saturday.

“In the last week we’ve spent a lot of time and we’ve analysed every one of their four matches. We start our opposition analysis this weekend because the last week was about analysing our own performance. So we’ve a lot of work done and we know a lot about them. We know how they’ve grown, how they’ve developed and how they have tweaked their gameplan.”

There is no getting away from the billing of this game being ‘The Geezer Derby’ as Kieran McGeeney faces Kildare for the first time as a manager since he controversially lost a vote by county board delegates in 2013. He gave 13 members of this current Kildare panel their debuts, many of whom were still in their teens when he took a punt on them. That knowledge of the players could prove to be an advantage to Armagh’s chances, but O’Neill is not buying into that.

“I don’t think it’s significant as people might think. Some players might have played under him, many players might have been on a panel but wouldn’t have been making starting 15s or 26s in some cases,” said O’Neill.

“Obviously he spent six years here and he has a good understanding of Kildare and Kildare football, but this is a totally different group in many respects; how we play, how we organise ourselves, how we setup. Only he will know himself how much that will help, it’s irrelevant to us because we’re focusing on own performance with the group we have and trying to nullify the opposition’s strengths. Anything else outside of that is just noise to me, it’s just noise.”