El Ancient East Classico Kildare v Meath

[Main Street]

Joe McQuillan is an excellent ref and way too classy for this low brow fare. He'll endeavor to keep the game flowing which probably won't suit these slackers.

[Donnellys Hollow]

Joe McQuillan is an excellent ref and way too classy for this low brow fare. He'll endeavor to keep the game flowing which probably won't suit these slackers.

[Jinxy]

Joe McQuillan is an excellent ref and way too classy for this low brow fare. He'll endeavor to keep the game flowing which probably won't suit these slackers.

Take that, flourbags.

[thejuice]

Same team as the Louth game. That would lead me to conclude we are not going to change our approach.

[Dinny Breen]

Kildare name same team too but word is Brophy to start.

Just learned Paul and Keith Cribben's mother is a Meath woman, the red hair I could forgive but they are now dead to me...

[Jinxy]

Both natural footballers.
You could tell there's human DNA in there somewhere.

[Rossfan]

Any adult views on this game ir is utterly just gallows humour before the winner faces Dublin?

[Captain Scarlet]

Kildare name same team too but word is Brophy to start.

Just learned Paul and Keith Cribben's mother is a Meath woman, the red hair I could forgive but they are now dead to me...

Their grandfather Larry McGuinness actually won an All Ireland...more bad news for you...

[Donnellys Hollow]

Mick Lyons' father Paddy played full back for Kildare.

[Jinxy]

Serious day for championship football, can't wait for this now.
Hopefully both sets of players go at it hammer & tongs a la '97.
I think Kildare are a year ahead of us on their learning curve but I've great faith in Andy & Co. to have the players primed to perform.
A few of our younger players stepped up the last day so hopefully that will boost their confidence and they go out and open their shoulders.
Need a big game from Cillian O'Sullivan and Graham Reilly.
My main worry is that our FB line and goalkeeper are not a stable, secure combination and we will concede goals.
Would also worry about Kildare getting the upper-hand around the middle and cutting off the supply to our forwards.
Could be a shoot-out, which will be great for the neutrals.

[Hardy]

I hate to be missing this one. Like most football people, I'm really hoping for a proper game of football today. There's no guarantee it'll happen, though. I saw Meath in Cork in the League co-operating for fifty minutes in perpetrating the worst football I've ever seen in the flesh. Looking at it from the stand, where you could see the whole field and the patterns of movement, it resembled nothing more than a game of Rugby League. You could actually see two lines of players strung out across the pitch, one moving forward (slowly, by means of short lateral and backwards handpasses) and the other retreating until an error or an intervention caused a reversal of possession and the pattern was repeated in the opposite direction.

So it's not as if under this management we are the apostles of proper football and a kicking game. However, in that match, with twenty minutes to go, suddenly we changed tactics. I don't know if it just happened or was ordered from the sideline, but we started to kick the ball long. Sometimes it was a good pass to a forward who had slipped his marker. Other times it was a kick to space or an old-fashioned punt and let the forward compete for the ball. We went from something like six or seven down to one up in that period, eventually drawing the match.

I take optimism from the hope that the management will have learned from that experience that playing football can work. Maybe not. Maybe they still believe the Rugby League approach is right for some situations.

Sorry to be concentrating on the quality of the football rather than the outcome of the game, but it's got to the stage for me that that is the order of priorities because the Rugby League stuff will kill the game if (1) it's seen to be the most effective style and (2) nothing is done to re-balance the essential structure of the game away from rewarding keeping possession until an unmissable opportunity emerges and towards rewarding kicking, winning possession and scoring under pressure.

Anyway – very difficult to see any basis to separate these teams, other than the perceived weakness and shakiness of our full back line. We've always prided ourselves on our full backs. Hopefully that means people like the McEntees know how to mend problems in full back lines. They also know Darren Fay's phone number. (No! I mean as a specialist coach. Although, maybe ...)

Honderoyal.

[Shamrock Shore]

I think the real football today will be in Drogheda 

Anyhoo I fancy Kildare to win this one

Kildare 4-27
Meath 3-19

[seafoid]

I think Kildare now have a streak of class. Meath are still frumpy. Kildare by 5.

[Jinxy]

Who asked ye.

[seafoid]

Who asked ye.

There is a sizeable Galway colony in Meath which confers both droit de seigneur and the proferring of opinions.
Flour bags were able to get out of D2. At the moment Meath is more emotional than rational.