NFL Division 2 2015

[moysider]

More like it from our lads tonight the platform was set for the win in the 1st half when we lead by 6 points at the break however our what we have we'll hold 2nd half tactics on another night or in the past would have got us caught but credit to the lads they dug in showed great character & our subs U Harney, D Smith, C Cregg all made a telling contributions to a well deserved win.

Key to success to consistency judging by our inconsistent run of results this year we have much to improved on. Impressive win for Cavan tonight with their strong midfield pairing & well organised defence it going to take a good side to beat them in this division. Surprising slow start to the league by Kildare knowing our luck they will probably be in flying form by the time we play them.

Judging by tonight they wont.

This is a team that beat Mayo by a point in a shoot-out in Div 1 first game last year. Then they got themselves relegated afterwards. Paddy Brophy was their best player but he s gone. The year before Seanie Johnstone was the hero when we were beat again by a point in McHale Park.

Is this Kildare's second loss on the bounce? That s a serious slide.

[Syferus]

Some woeful shooting by Kildare, and Meath too to be honest. I'd love to be able to rely on that sort of shooting happening when we play them but you can't. Focus on your own game and don't worry about the opposition (within reason obviously), all these teams are operating around the same level anyways so here should be no inferiority complexes or arrogance present.

[Ohtoohtobe]

In no way did it affect the result - Meath missed a stack of frees and should have won by more - but did anyone who watched this game find the refereeing hard to fathom?
I'm not mentioning this as a whinge more to point out a general 'softness' in how gaelic football is refereed these days. Prime example, Ciaran Fitzpatrick nudged Andrew Tormey off the ball with what I thought was a textbook shoulder, and the ref gave a free in. Loads of other examples throughout including a black card for Graham Reilly for a slightly mistimed challenge and a free in for Stephen Bray after he kicked the ball wide having been well shadowed by Peter Kelly.

Is football become a non-contact sport?

In other news, we really are a very brittle football team.

Yer 6 - O Brien is it? - looks far from brittle!

Yeah but it's not physical strength or physical courage I'm talking about. Our skills and decision making crumble when even moderate pressure is applied. Even our experienced players. Eoin Doyle the only consistent exception.
Even when we played poorly under McGeeney we were not a soft touch. The win in Navan in 2011, for example, showed that. Sad to say we look back to being a pushover in tight games.
Tonight we were four points up against a Meath team that didn't have Graham Reilly and couldn't kick a free to save their lives. They got themselves together for the last 20 minutes and outscored us 8-2.
Weak as p*ss.

Yeah. But ye got to break it down. I would say tactically weak yes.  Bringing on O Connor was desperate because he was totally isolated. And Paddy O Rourke's presence meant Hail Marys a waste of time.  Some poor decisions making at times too. What was Cribben doing taking contact at the very end. He lays that off ye draw the game - maybe it was even a goal chance.

The Cribbin incident you mention is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about and it was far from an isolated case of a Kildare player taking the wrong option under pressure.
Look it's still only February and I think we will improve but I'm worried there's a frailty there that will cost us any half-close championship match.
Maybe I'm being too harsh. Be interested to hear the assessment of DH or Dinny or any other Kildare supporters.

[Westside]

Cavan full value for our win tonight.. And our support outnumbered the Laois support away from home. 3 points away from home after two games is a good start to survival in Division 2.

[moysider]

Some woeful shooting by Kildare (and Meath too to be honest). I'd love to be able to rely on that sort of shooting happening when we play them but you can't. Focus on your own game and don't worry about the opposition, all these teams are operating around the same level anyways so here should be no inferiority complexes or arrogance present.

Bad shooting and 'poor shot selection' is a sign that other stuff is going badly. If the approach is right the ball goes over the bar.

From Meath and Kildare point of view, shooting would be least of my concerns. They ve always lads that can kick a score.

[Syferus]

Some woeful shooting by Kildare (and Meath too to be honest). I'd love to be able to rely on that sort of shooting happening when we play them but you can't. Focus on your own game and don't worry about the opposition, all these teams are operating around the same level anyways so here should be no inferiority complexes or arrogance present.

Bad shooting and 'poor shot selection' is a sign that other stuff is going badly. If the approach is right the ball goes over the bar.

From Meath and Kildare point of view, shooting would be least of my concerns. They ve always lads that can kick a score.

Kildare had John Doyle (one of my all-time favourite players), but who else?

Even the good Kildare underage teams had awful trouble finding the posts when it mattered in recent years. Forward play in general in Kildare has been in a serious mire, indeed the whole Seanie drama wouldn't have happened had Geezer not been worried about his forwards' ability to score. You'd have to wonder how attack play is thaught within the county and if it needs to be reassessed if it hasn't already been. I know we had fallow periods too with forwards but I think bad play up front limited what was a very solid Kildare outfit under Geezer, an outfit that had genuine shots at AIs in 2010 and 2011. Not too unlike Mayo under Horan, really..

Anyways, enough worrying about Kildare. Next stop is Croans' club defining game at Croker on Valentine's. That'd really make this a nice run for Roscommon teams.

[Ohtoohtobe]

You're clinging to stereotypes Syferus.
Forward play wasn't that big a problem under McGeeney. We scored 18 points, every single one from play, in a Leinster final against Dublin. 2-17 in an AIQF. Even last year we put up big scores in Division One and 0-17 in championship against Meath. Our problem was leaking goals at the other end. Two each for Meath and Monaghan last year and four (should have been eight) against Dublin the year before.
Ryan has switched to 14 men behind the ball so far this year to counteract and I'm not sure it suits us.

[Donnellys Hollow]

In no way did it affect the result - Meath missed a stack of frees and should have won by more - but did anyone who watched this game find the refereeing hard to fathom?
I'm not mentioning this as a whinge more to point out a general 'softness' in how gaelic football is refereed these days. Prime example, Ciaran Fitzpatrick nudged Andrew Tormey off the ball with what I thought was a textbook shoulder, and the ref gave a free in. Loads of other examples throughout including a black card for Graham Reilly for a slightly mistimed challenge and a free in for Stephen Bray after he kicked the ball wide having been well shadowed by Peter Kelly.

Is football become a non-contact sport?

In other news, we really are a very brittle football team.

Yer 6 - O Brien is it? - looks far from brittle!

Yeah but it's not physical strength or physical courage I'm talking about. Our skills and decision making crumble when even moderate pressure is applied. Even our experienced players. Eoin Doyle the only consistent exception.
Even when we played poorly under McGeeney we were not a soft touch. The win in Navan in 2011, for example, showed that. Sad to say we look back to being a pushover in tight games.
Tonight we were four points up against a Meath team that didn't have Graham Reilly and couldn't kick a free to save their lives. They got themselves together for the last 20 minutes and outscored us 8-2.
Weak as p*ss.

Yeah. But ye got to break it down. I would say tactically weak yes.  Bringing on O Connor was desperate because he was totally isolated. And Paddy O Rourke's presence meant Hail Marys a waste of time.  Some poor decisions making at times too. What was Cribben doing taking contact at the very end. He lays that off ye draw the game - maybe it was even a goal chance.

The Cribbin incident you mention is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about and it was far from an isolated case of a Kildare player taking the wrong option under pressure.
Look it's still only February and I think we will improve but I'm worried there's a frailty there that will cost us any half-close championship match.
Maybe I'm being too harsh. Be interested to hear the assessment of DH or Dinny or any other Kildare supporters.

You could argue it already did against Monaghan last year. That brittleness has been on display for a while now.

Things are bad when we have the Mayo and Roscommon ladeens pouring over our shortcomings! Someone resurrect that Ballaghadereen thread to keep them occupied for a few days.

There is just a dearth of natural leaders in the panel. Even up to 18 months ago you would have had Earley, Doyle and Sweeney in the background, if not on the field. Leinster winners and seriously strong characters. The older players that we need to lead the thing now suffered some cruel defeats in 2009-2011 and I suspect they left long term mental scars. The younger players are looking to them for guidance and it just isn't there.

The lack of a settled midfield has been a problem since 2010 and it looks like it will continue for the foreseeable future. I've been following Kildare teams for a long time and even in bad years we always seemed to produce decent midfielders but that is not the case anymore. We can't keep harping back to losing Feely and Hurley and wallowing in self pity. It's four years since Feely won the county title and he never played for the Kildare seniors anyway and I have my doubts over whether Hurley would have realised his talent in the long run.

People will talk about Kildare's forwards which is a lazy enough analysis. They're far from perfect but they have not been our undoing for a number of years now. I do think there is the bones of a decent defensive unit there with Fergal Conway and Emmet Bolton to come back and also David Hyland who I rate. We are asking a lot of Tommy Moolick, Dan Flynn and Paul Cribbin to transform the team around that middle third considering they have only about four years of proper senior experience between them.

[Donnellys Hollow]

You could argue that this brittleness in Kildare football extends well beyond the county team. If you look at the club championship the only top senior team who have a steely toughness about them are Moorefield. I will never know how they managed to win the 2014 championship. Sarsfields were 5 points up in the drawn final with only a few minutes to go. Celbridge owned the ball against them in the semi final and should have been out past the bundle of sticks roundabout by half time. Athy would probably win the county championship at a canter if they had any little bit of composure about themselves.

3 of the 4 best club teams in Kildare, arguably the top 3 teams in terms of individual talent, and a serious flakiness about each of them.

[Syferus]

You're clinging to stereotypes Syferus.
Forward play wasn't that big a problem under McGeeney. We scored 18 points, every single one from play, in a Leinster final against Dublin. 2-17 in an AIQF. Even last year we put up big scores in Division One and 0-17 in championship against Meath. Our problem was leaking goals at the other end. Two each for Meath and Monaghan last year and four (should have been eight) against Dublin the year before.
Ryan has switched to 14 men behind the ball so far this year to counteract and I'm not sure it suits us.

I'm thinking about conversion rates, any team can score a heap of points but it's how efficient you are with the ball that counts more. I saw Kildare play in the AI series four times in person in 2010, 2011 and 2012 and on each occassion shot selection was glaringly poor, apart from the second half against Meath in 2010 and that was mostly Johnny Doyle kickinglights out.

Forwards regularly ran strange wide lines and kicked shots from angles even Evan Regan wouldn't be able to score from, be it because they could see no one to pass it to or just because they didn't bother looking in the first place. Free-taking by anyone but Doyle was also a sore point. It always looked like a coachable problem too, at least in being patient enough to work balls outrds again rather than taking long bombs and giving the opposition the ball back needlessly, indeed that probably contributed to the defence coughing up the quoted scores too. I'm interested to see how Armagh develop under Geezer to see if it's something that carries over to that team because they were as reliant on Clarke as Kildare ever were on Doyle.

[Ohtoohtobe]

Hard to disagree with any of that DH a saddening but fair assessment.

Yeah interesting points Syf. I actually had a theory that Kildare were operating a shoot-from-anywhere policy at times in those years. I think the logic might have been that turnovers are so important these days that we'd rather the ball go dead than get dispossessed trying to work it closer.
Maybe there was something to it - we weren't a million miles away in 2010 or 2011.

[mylestheslasher]

Cavan full value for our win tonight.. And our support outnumbered the Laois support away from home. 3 points away from home after two games is a good start to survival in Division 2.

Super win, should have been another 6 points in it really. Two a way games out of 4 played and 3 points. Lets hope we can make hay in our home games against Down and Kildare next.

[Shrewdness]

Donnelly's Hollow is correct when he says that us '' Mayo and Roscommon ladeens'' should talk about something other than Kildare's shortcomings. Why should be waste our time talking about a team that never actually wins anything and are overhyped in general every year. How many Leinster titles is it now in the last 90 years?. Mayo have won 4 Connacht titles in a row and could have won a few All Irelands in recent years. Roscommon are a team heading in the right direction, backed up by one of the best underage structures in the country. How dare we talk about Kildare, a county who usually make the Gaa headlines, only because of the size of the county boards debt.. Now, where's that Ballagh thread gone to?

[Shrewdness]

Well done to Cavan btw.

[seafoid]

In no way did it affect the result - Meath missed a stack of frees and should have won by more - but did anyone who watched this game find the refereeing hard to fathom?
I'm not mentioning this as a whinge more to point out a general 'softness' in how gaelic football is refereed these days. Prime example, Ciaran Fitzpatrick nudged Andrew Tormey off the ball with what I thought was a textbook shoulder, and the ref gave a free in. Loads of other examples throughout including a black card for Graham Reilly for a slightly mistimed challenge and a free in for Stephen Bray after he kicked the bal.l wide having been well shadowed by Peter Kelly.

Is football become a non-contact sport?

In other news, we really are a very brittle football team.

Yer 6 - O Brien is it? - looks far from brittle!

Yeah but it's not physical strength or physical courage I'm talking about. Our skills and decision making crumble when even moderate pressure is applied. Even our experienced players. Eoin Doyle the only consistent exception.
Even when we played poorly under McGeeney we were not a soft touch. The win in Navan in 2011, for example, showed that. Sad to say we look back to being a pushover in tight games.
Tonight we were four points up against a Meath team that didn't have Graham Reilly and couldn't kick a free to save their lives. They got themselves together for the last 20 minutes and outscored us 8-2.
Weak as p*ss.

Yeah. But ye got to break it down. I would say tactically weak yes.  Bringing on O Connor was desperate because he was totally isolated. And Paddy O Rourke's presence meant Hail Marys a waste of time.  Some poor decisions making at times too. What was Cribben doing taking contact at the very end. He lays that off ye draw the game - maybe it was even a goal chance.

The Cribbin incident you mention is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about and it was far from an isolated case of a Kildare player taking the wrong option under pressure.
Look it's still only February and I think we will improve but I'm worried there's a frailty there that will cost us any half-close championship match.
Maybe I'm being too harsh. Be interested to hear the assessment of DH or Dinny or any other Kildare supporters.

You could argue it already did against Monaghan last year. That brittleness has been on display for a while now.

Things are bad when we have the Mayo and Roscommon ladeens pouring over our shortcomings! Someone resurrect that Ballaghadereen thread to keep them occupied for a few days.

There is just a dearth of natural leaders in the panel. Even up to 18 months ago you would have had Earley, Doyle and Sweeney in the background, if not on the field. Leinster winners and seriously strong characters. The older players that we need to lead the thing now suffered some cruel defeats in 2009-2011 and I suspect they left long term mental scars. The younger players are looking to them for guidance and it just isn't there.

The lack of a settled midfield has been a problem since 2010 and it looks like it will continue for the foreseeable future. I've been following Kildare teams for a long time and even in bad years we always seemed to produce decent midfielders but that is not the case anymore. We can't keep harping back to losing Feely and Hurley and wallowing in self pity. It's four years since Feely won the county title and he never played for the Kildare seniors anyway and I have my doubts over whether Hurley would have realised his talent in the long run.

People will talk about Kildare's forwards which is a lazy enough analysis. They're far from perfect but they have not been our undoing for a number of years now. I do think there is the bones of a decent defensive unit there with Fergal Conway and Emmet Bolton to come back and also David Hyland who I rate. We are asking a lot of Tommy Moolick, Dan Flynn and Paul Cribbin to transform the team around that middle third considering they have only about four years of proper senior experience between them.

That 2011 loss to Donegal after extra time must have been very hard for the players. It was so close and cou have gone either way but when kildare lost it was like the end of the road. Kildare remind me a bit of the waterford hurlers