Anyone that watched Kildare play Meath on Saturday night would have been impressed by the Lillywhites.
It was supposed to be a close contest but instead, Kildare came out as victors by nine points.
They were relentless, nothing came easy for Meath and in the end, it was men against boys and both sets of fans will agree on that.
With the exception of a fired up Meath side scoring four unanswered points at the start of the second half, there were no major problems for Cian O’Neill’s team as they ended their eight-year exodus from a Leinster final.
O’Neill’s team are a completely different side than the one that he oversaw last year, although they gained promotion to Division 2 in 2016 they never seemed all that impressive.
It’s different this year, consecutive promotions and the nine-point win shows how far they have come from their awful performance against Westmeath in last year’s Leinster Championship when they lost 1-12 to 1-11.
Midfielder Kevin Feely admitted that they had one eye on Dublin going into that game and fluffed their lines.
Manager Cian O’Neill understandably came under a lot of pressure after the game but fast forward twelve months and he has instilled hope that the Leinster final won’t be as one-sided as usual.
He spoke to Malachy Clerkin of the Irish Times about his Kildare side and reflected on the defeat to Westmeath and the loss may just prove the turning point for the side as to why they can put it up to Dublin (or Westmeath) in the final.
O’Neill has had his fair share of wins and losses but something about the Westmeath game was different as he told Clerkin.
“We lost a game we felt we should have won and this was how I felt. It was actual physical sickness. It wasn’t mental.
“I never felt stress in my life, in any shape or form, like I did last year. I was physically sick for five days after that Westmeath game. Sick in my stomach. I had never felt like that before or after a game with any team in any sport. It was tough, it really was. It was failure. That was the feeling – failure.”
There’s little doubting that the failure of the 2016 Championship was enough to spur on O’Neill and his side and watching them on Saturday night they were a step above Meath and then some and surely can’t be that far behind Dublin.
