Job done. There has been some histrionics on the way, but with five wins from six games, Kildare have fought their way back in to Division 2 with little fuss. It was the first task on the checklist for Cian O'Neill upon his appointment as manager, and he will be quite content that they have achieved their goal with a game to spare.
The Lilywhites boss expressed his pride following today's game, saying that his players carried out what they had practiced in training to perfection.
"I think pride is the big emotion. A lot was written about the last match and where things were at, and you know it was a disappointing performance. But people seem to forget that for the last 20 minutes we were down to 14 men[against Sligo]. There's no doubt that we were disappointed with it, but we trained hard and the lads put everything into the last two weeks and you'd like to think that it was going to come out in a performance like that, and it did. So it's more pride than anything in the work that they put in."
The most disappointing aspect of that defeat to Sligo was how poorly the defence performed, but they were superb against Tipperary as they constricted the Premier Men to just 1-5. It was that defensive resolve that pleased O'Neill the most.
"I thought defensively, and that's not just 2-7, but all over the pitch I thought we were outstanding and that's something that we wanted to work on because we recognised that it was a disappointing part of our previous performances and I think we remedied that today."
Kildare looked as if they had wrapped the game up midway through the second half when Daniel Flynn slammed home a goal that put the Lilywhites into a 12 point lead, but Tipperary went straight down the other end and found the net through Kevin Fahey. O'Neill was perplexed that referee Noel Mooney failed to award a free to the Lilywhites in the build-up to the goal.
1.
Kevin Fahey scores Tipps only goal.