O'Neill exasperated with failures in key areas for Kildare following defeat to Dublin's third string

Cian O'Neill made no effort to hide his disappointment following Kildare's two-point defeat to a third string Dublin side in the O'Byrne Cup semi-final on Sunday. The Kildare boss looked on as his side managed to scored just four points in the final 48 minutes of the game after Daniel Flynn's goal had given them a healthy looking six-point lead with 24 minutes played, but Dublin timed their comeback well and were far superior on the run-in as they scored five points without reply to edge their way into the final.

The fact that it was a Dublin team made up of players who will be unlikely to feature for the county after their O'Byrne Cup campaign was the most disappointing factor when you consider Kildare had a near enough full strength team out, but O'Neill said regardless of the opposition, losing any game in that manner is a sickner.

"We’re disgusted. It’s not disappointed, we’re disgusted to lose a match like that that we should have been controlling. On Tuesday when we start to look towards the league, yes there are benefits of course because you can look at the workload coming in to next weekend, but no we certainly didn’t come here to lose that match and we’re not happy with that performance," said O'Neill straight after the game.

"It doesn’t matter who the opposition was and if it was a semi-final, for me it’s about what is our process going forward? We had four good victories, we beat Roscommon in a challenge and had the three group stage matches. It’s nice to keep that going and that’s the disappointing part because it ended in a way that we wouldn’t have liked it to have."

When asked if it was a worrying sign that Kildare had lost to a Dublin made up of players who will likely watch on from the terraces once the O'Byrne Cup concludes, O'Neill responded by stating that the opposition didn't matter, but the mistakes his side continue to make was the most peeving aspect.

"I don’t really care if they’re on the terraces or at home watching it or whatever," continued O'Neill.

"All I care about is what we do and what we’re not doing at the moment and how we can improve that. The opposition today has absolutely no bearing on how we prepare for the next two weeks, so we will look and analyse that match because there is huge areas, and reoccurring areas where it’s not happening for us.

"Our game management, you saw some of the frees we got at the end and we just kicked the ball back to the opposition. Our scoring percentage is not where it should be, turnovers and them turnovers turning into scores, that’s what we can control."

Kildare's failure to impact on games in the second half has been a worrying feature of their game under O'Neill's stewardship, and the manager feels that his side are missing a crucial ruthless streak that all of the best teams possess.

"I just felt that it is something that has been happening for quite a while to Kildare teams, they’re playing in fits and spurts. When we played with a positive edge in the first half we did a lot of damage and scored two goals, but then there’s that almost regular thing of going back into themselves.

"I just feel that that ruthlessness is not there in this group. They’re a very young group, an emerging group, but when you get an opportunity to go at any team, like the chances we had, at times we tried to walk the ball into the net instead of just knocking it over and keeping the scoreboard ticking over. That does affect the confidence of the team. If you miss a couple of handy scores and the opposition get a couple that you’ve probably given to them; it’s a double whammy."

The coughing up of possession on numerous occasions throughout the game was a particular problem for Kildare, while the shooting percentages were also well below par. When quizzed on what the key work-ons will be in the aftermath of this defeat, O'Neill outlined how the four point haul in 48 minutes was of immediate concern.

"There was lots of disappointing things from that, and that was certainly one of the highlights, or lowlights. Even 2-4 in the first half, to go in two points up, we were disappointed with our conversion rate. We came on 43% which is just not good enough. We would have liked to have been, in all honesty, further ahead based on the possession we had.

"It was a game of quarters, we dominated the first quarter and we were comfortable. The second quarter, we just went into ourselves. We stopped being attack-minded, we were slow and labourious. Dublin got a run on us and kicked four points without reply and obviously that put them in great shape going in at half-time.

"We started the second half reasonably well but we never got going. I think the key statistic from today -apart from our shooting percentages- was our turnovers. We just gave the ball away very naively and stupidly and we got punished by a very good young team. They did what they had to do to close out the game and when we had chances at the end we gave the ball away again," O'Neill concluded.

Kildare will have a two week break before their opening game of the National League when they travel to Navan to take on Meath in the first round of Division Two games.