Lilies ready to finish with a flourish

SLOW starters they may be, but as long as Kildare keep finishing their All-Ireland Championship games with searing bursts for the finish line, James Kavanagh will be a happy man.

The Lilywhites have been the ultimate slow burners of the Championship, losing out to Louth in Leinster before a simmering qualifier campaign that finally boiled over with an impressive quarter-final victory over Meath.

Their individual games have often followed that same theme with slow starts in the ties against Monaghan and Meath, when they fell three and six points behind early on, before eventually winning both games by handsome margins.