Moorefield 'achieving on provincial and national level' all part of the plan for Glavin

It has been quite the year for Ross Glavin. The former Moorefield player is still only in his first 12 months as manager of his club, but the silverware is piling up. The Newbridge side have already captured the Division 1 league title and the Kildare Senior Football Championship title, and they will be looking to add a provincial accolade to the trophy cabinet when they take on St Loman's of Westmeath on December 10 in the Leinster final.

Glavin was on the only Moorefield team to have ever played in a provincial decider, helping the vintage crop of 2006 to a memorable win over Rhode. Coming in as a manager, Glavin was keen to get the club back to such lofty heights and to establish themselves on a national scale.

"It’s a great feeling," Glavin said following the win over Rathnew on Sunday.

"The lads really dug it out today and really battled hard. One of our targets at the start of the year was… we were sick of talking about being the biggest club in Newbridge or the biggest club in Kildare, and we wanted to start achieving more at provincial level and national level. We’re in that position now and that’s the main thing."

Once again, Moorefield went the hard way about achieving victory. Just like in their league final win over Naas and the county final triumph against Celbridge, Moorefield played with a numerical disadvantage for a considerable chunk of the game. Cian O'Connor's 37th minute dismissal - albeit harsh - was avoidable, but it seemed to galvanise the Moores, and they actually outscored their opponents by 1-7 to 1-1 while down to 14 men.

It's at times like that when you can see the character of this team shining through, and Glavin was quick to point to the fact that they were responding to everything that Rathnew threw at them, something they've managed against every opponent this year.

"We’ve made it tough on ourselves a few times this year and I suppose it is exactly what we would have expected coming down to play a Rathnew team invigorated by their win two weeks’ ago," said the Moorefield manager.

"So, we wouldn’t have expected anything else and we gave them due respect for the performance they put in two weeks’ ago. We tried to focus in on their key players and what their key attributes were. Again, we showed all our key attributes, and when the going got tough when they scored a goal, we had a point on the board within 10 seconds. When we got a red card we had another couple of scores on the board within five or 10 minutes. It’s how you react to these setbacks, and we’ve showed a real positive attitude all year."

One of the key members in Moorefield's ranks this year has been teenager Mark Dempsey, who has come into the side and taken the man-marking job against some of the best players in Leinster club football. The 18-year-old had already done superbly to quell the threat of Athy's Niall Kelly and Celbridge's Paddy Brophy, so there were no hesitations in asking him to track Rathnew dangerman Leighton Glynn, the key component of their attack.

He kept the 36-year-old mostly quiet throughout, with Glynn scoring just one point from play and not dictating proceedings to his usual best. Dempsey had a massive hand in the first goal by cutting out a Rathnew attacking and starting off a Moorefield one, while another interception from the defender in stoppage time at the end of the game preceded a lung-busting run where he evaded two defenders who lunged desperately to try and take him out, before exchanging passes with Eddie Heavey and then slotting the ball into the back of Peter Dignam's net.

It capped another impressive performance, and showed another glimpse of the huge talent that Dempsey possesses.

"You can’t praise the young man enough," said Glavin.

"He’s got all the attributes to be one of the top defenders in the country if he keeps improving. We set him those challenges week in week out, that we want him to do a specific job on a specific player and he doesn’t shirk any responsibility, nor does any of the other players in Moorefield either. They’re all embracing the role we’ve asked them to do and they’re stepping up to the mark."