An Mhí v Cill Dara

[Donnellys Hollow]

2003 was also a cracking game, Paddy Murray was fantastic that night (pity injury ruined his career).

The last time we met was 2007, Meath comfortable enough winners that day.

By the way, I've always hated Kildare for some reason.

Sure ye feckers hate everyone 

Still Meath will be favourites and rightly so.

'03 was a great game alright. Wasn't it Daithí Regan who missed a 13 yard free with the last kick of the game to level it? The two Suncroft lads had stormers that day. I think Killian Brennan was man of the match and Rainbow got two or three points.

'07 was a right horror show. Darren Fay galloping up from full-back to rattle in a goal. We were crippled by injuries that year after the league semi-final. Think we had Ross Glavin and Kevin O'Neill midfield. Jason Phillips came on at full-forward - we might as well have started the whole Moorefield team!

Meath - Leinster Senior Football Champions 2010, All-Ireland Semi-Finalists '07 & '09.
Kildare - Haven't won anything since the 2003 O'Byrne Cup.

Meath clear favourites. Kildare will struggle to keep it kicked out to them.

[Dinny Breen]

Jaysus hard to believe Gooch and Rainbow are still on the panel, great servants to the cause. Glenn came on with cameo to close out the game, the Hill was closed for U2 concert or something, one of the first Saturday evening games in Croke Park too, would bite your hand off for the same result.

Hopefully we can keep within 6 points of Meath.

[Donnellys Hollow]

Kildare have no naturally accurate forwards and there's a touch of the hail mary's about some of our scores.......... So says the bould Kevin McStay.

Them razor sharp Meath buckos will make sh1te of us so. You wouldn't see the likes of Cian Ward or Big Joe shooting from outside 'the hotzone'! 

Geezer should be forgetting about this +16 -10 lark. Drill it into them all week long: 'work the ball into the hotzone lads'

[Jinxy]

Kevin McStay and his constant basketball-isms. 
"Inlet ball" is his current favourite.

[ballinaman]

By the way, I've always hated Kildare for some reason.

Seems to be the norm among the sizeable number of Meath lads I know...must keep an eye on this thread, am sure it'll get interesting!

[Hardy]

Kildare have no naturally accurate forwards ......... So says the bould Kevin McStay.

James Kavanagh looks pretty natural and pretty accurate to me. I'd go so far as to say we know who what we have to do to win this one.

[stephenite]

You'd have to think the Ball throwers would be too strong for the lilywhites

[lynchbhoy]

Kevin McStay and his constant basketball-isms. 
"Inlet ball" is his current favourite.

his constant bulls**e drives me nuts. Do RTE and TV3 deliberately employ moany pains in the holes like him to talk utter bollix and get playersnames wrong and not know the rules of the game !

[AZOffaly]

Kildare have no naturally accurate forwards and there's a touch of the hail mary's about some of our scores.......... So says the bould Kevin McStay.

Them razor sharp Meath buckos will make sh1te of us so. You wouldn't see the likes of Cian Ward or Big Joe shooting from outside 'the hotzone'! 

Geezer should be forgetting about this +16 -10 lark. Drill it into them all week long: 'work the ball into the hotzone lads'

what's a hotzone? Is Kevin McStay stealing the fruits of my analysis again? I swear he reads this site

[commonsense]

I had to laugh at the Sunday game and it's "Hot zone". Imagine that they felt they needed a football analyst and a visual graphic to basically tell us that players are more likely to score the closer they are to the goal. It doesn't take a genius to work that out.

As far as Meath Kildare go, I would usually be a more pessimistic meath fan. I didn't think we'd beat the dubs, and I thought we'd only scrape past louth, which is all we did. But I reckon we'll beat Kildare. I think Derry threw in the towel in the second half altogether, so didn't put it up to them. I also think that this year's Monaghan team have been hyped out of all proportion by the media. Sure they've only 2 forwards, and one of those only scores frees. Tyrone showed them up, I wouldn't give Kildare great kudos for beating them. Meath to win by at least a three point margin.

[AZOffaly]

I didn't see the SG last night, but there is a validity to the hotzone concept, if it is what I think it is. Basically it comes down to shot selection. Teams that don't have a clear method of delivering the ball into an area in front of the goals will suffer in their shooting percentages and their scores tally. But the shooting itself is only the end product.

There's no point understanding that you should only shoot, if possible, from good positions if you don't then extrapolate that out into 'how do we get our forwards the ball in the positions where it's a high percentage shot?'.

That's where you can have players feeding off a target man, or a fast moving possession game, or whatever. But the idea should be that your lads work the ball into a 'hotzone'.  Obviously then, the defence will try to push you away from the scoring area, and try to force you to shoot from bad positions/angles.

It sounds very easy, and very obvious, but you'd be amazed how many wides are kicked from positions that shouldn't even be attempted, all because there's either no plan, or the defence will just not allow you in there.

This is a bit of analysis I did of the first half of that dreadful (scoring wise) fermanagh v kildare qualifier a few years ago. The red dots are misses from play, the greens are scores from play, the yellow is scores from frees, the blue is misses from frees. The other thing to look for is the numbers of the player that took the shot. A lot of wides are from backs or midfielders taking shots that shouldn't be attempted.

This is Fermanagh's shot chart.


This is Kildare's.

[Dinny Breen]

He was trying to explain Kildares high wide tally but he just got his knickers in a twist. All he had to say was that Kildare didn't always work the ball close enough to the goal to make their point taking that little bit easier and it's a valid point but northern teams in particular defend that zone very well. However claims that Kildare don't have natural forwards is just a sterotype going back to Micko's era where it had a lot of substance in fairness. As for the Hail Mary reference that is just idiotic. Brolly fairly stuck it to him though.

[AZOffaly]

I see. It's coincidental that my chart above is for Kildare v a northern team, but if you look at the two green dots from Kildare, it's the half forwards and midfielder coming through the middle that had the best opportunities. Johnny Doyle (I think) kicked a free from the right, and had a miss from play. Fermanagh were good at keeping Kildare forwards out, but Kildare did get joy by playing the ball in and laying off to a runner.

[Dinny Breen]

Ah remember that now AZ, could you have picked a worse match in living memory to analyze though, no score in the 1st 20 odd minutes from either side.

[AZOffaly]

Ah remember that now AZ, could you have picked a worse match in living memory to analyze though, no score in the 1st 20 odd minutes from either side.

It was happenstance. I was discussing this very topic with a lad I know, and I said, 'I'll do a bit of analysis on one of the games this weekend'. I picked Kildare - Fermanagh, and it was perfect for my hypothesis as it turned out

I also did Galway ve Kerry or something, and the amount of scores in that game from directly in front of the posts was amazing.