O'Neill insists there are no disciplinary issues in Kildare camp following Killarney night out

Kildare manager Cian O’Neill insisted that there are no disciplinary issues in the Kildare senior football squad after Sunday’s defeat to Galway.

That defeat concluded the Lilywhites’ participation in this year’s league, with Kildare losing all seven of their games on route to relegation to Division 2.

Rumours circulated about a recent night out following the defeat to Kerry on St Patrick’s Day in Tralee, but O’Neill told the media following the Kerry game that there are no issues at present.

“No, there’s no disciplinary problem in the camp,” said O’Neill.

“If you’re referring to last week, basically we went out for a few drinks as a group – I think the lads deserved it. We were staying in Killarney after the match which is very different to staying somewhere before a match – you don’t even leave the hotel. That’s what happened last week, obviously there will be stories, there will be discussions,” he continued.

O’Neill went on to explain that he and Kerry manager Eammon Fitzmaurice had agreed to play a challenge match on Sunday morning to give panel members who hadn’t seen much game time during the league a chance to get a run. Kerry lost a number of players to injury during their defeat to Dublin the previous weekend however, so Fitzmaurice called the game off.

O’Neill had a full group of players down in Kerry that weekend, so a decision was made to let the players blow off some steam after what has been a gruelling campaign.

“We purposely brought down the full group last week because we had a match against the Kerry selection that wasn’t on the 26 on Sunday morning. Unfortunately, they picked up a rake of injuries the week before and Eammon pulled the match on the Tuesday because they didn’t have enough,” explained O’Neill.

“It was unfortunate because we were going to have a match at 11am on the Sunday, so we made the decision as a management that we’re bringing everyone down, we’re after being beaten – mathematically we were relegated – so we said we’d have a few drinks together and put it behind us and get on the bus the next morning and go back to Kildare.”

Asked if any players were dropped for the clash with Galway due to disciplinary issues, O’Neill said that the reason behind the six changes from the team the previous weekend was to give as many panel members as possible a run out, while there were also some injury concerns.

“What we wanted to do was to give to do was just to give lads an opportunity who hadn’t been on the 26 – we wanted to give them an opportunity to get on the team. We have 34, so to do that some lads had to step out to let others step in.”