Boss all smiles as Kildare stand up

KIERAN McGEENEY’S post-match interviews are becoming just as riveting as his team’s fortitude.

In the tight environs outside the Kildare dressing room in Páirc Tailteann on Saturday, he had a little something of everything.

There was humour. Asked why he took off Emmet Bolton after he had scored 1-1 in the space of two minutes, the Armagh man smiled wryly: “He was f****d, not to put too fine a point on it.”

There was defiance. “We feel there is a lot more football in us. It’s hard every week we are told we are not natural footballers. You just try to keep on going, trying to improve with every game. The thing about being a pundit is that eventually you’ll be right.”

And there was repudiation. In these pages on Saturday, Meath selector Paul Grimley suggested McGeeney took offence to Kildare being typecast as more of a second-half team because it alerted other teams to their strongest and weakest points in games.

McGeeney’s take on that couldn’t be more different. “Teams come with the impression that the time to get Kildare is at the start, so they raise their game. Teams go out to try and throw everything at us at the start. I think there is an expectation out there that we can control a game for 70 or 75 minutes, which is an impossibility.

“Where your purple patch happens is irrelevant, it doesn’t matter how good or how poor you are, it’s going to happen.”

McGeeney and Grimley shared a warm embrace both before and after Saturday’s game.

As the Kildare manager said afterwards, “You don’t take any pleasure in seeing your friends beaten. But you do your job.”

Here, Kildare were marginally the better team in the second half but given they were playing against the wind and in front of a boisterous Meath crowd, they kept their heads.

They were aided by Meath’s dreadful shooting. Joe Sheridan and Graham Reilly were playing nothing close to their capabilities while Meath could have made a lot more hay using the wind and pumping balls into the full-forward line.

And then there was Seamus Kenny’s departure from the game. With blood streaming down his face, he exited the fray in the 57th minute with the look of a man who intended returning. But he didn’t.

In his absence his marker, Emmet Bolton, was able to get forward much easier. With Paddy O’Rourke coming on for Kenny, Stephen Bray was reassigned to Bolton but he lacked the end-to-end engine of the Meath captain.

Bolton, who had put Kildare one up in the 51st minute before Cian Ward restored parity with a free four minutes later, then took a pass from substitute James Kavanagh to kick a point when a goal looked on.

After another replacement, Ronan Sweeney, tagged on another, the Eadestown wing-back again found himself in yards of space to palm home the crucial 66th-minute goal.

Tomás O’Connor and Kavanagh had combined to put him through and Meath were reeling. Bray and then a Brian Farrell free narrowed the gap to three with a minute of injury-time left but the home side’s game was up.

Kavanagh, who was in flying form, was one of two substitutions McGeeney made before the second half resumed.

“It was turning into that type of game and we feel we have the type of players that can go in,” he said. “Again it’s easy to say it after a game like that but some days when they don’t work somebody will say, ‘so much for your panel’.”

Even though they were ahead at the break, 1-6 to 0-7, even considering their penchant for second-half blitzes, the wind was so strong there were doubts whether that advantage would be enough for Kildare.

After corner-back Hugh McGrillen ventured forward to point, Meath kicked four on the bounce to level matters.

Cian Ward, who kicked seven points from dead balls, converted his second 45 of the game as well as a free after Bray was fouled, although he looked to have over-carried.

Ward’s place-taking against the wind in the first half was noteworthy, his first 45 in the 23rd minute a belter into the teeth of the breeze.

That was Meath’s first score in 13 minutes after Kildare followed up Johnny Doyle’s penalty goal — his second in a week — with points from Eamonn Callaghan, Padraig O’Neill and Eoghan O’Flaherty.

Joe McQuillan’s penalty call was a close one, with O’Connor appearing to be fouled by Brendan Murphy and Kevin Reilly after he spilled the ball over the line — similar to Sheridan in last year’s Leinster final.

Three points turned out to be the difference between the sides but, like the Leinster quarter-final, Meath could have no gripes that they weren’t beaten by the better team.

Kildare now face their third game in 14 days next Saturday but they seemed to revel in the condensed high volume of action.

“It’s a bit like somebody hitting you,” said McGeeney. “You either stand up or lie down and we’re trying to get the fellas to stand up.”

Scorers for Meath: C Ward 0-8 (5f, 2 45); S Bray, S Kenny 0-2 each; S O’Rourke, B Farrell (f) 0-1 each.

Subs for Meath: M Ward for Meade (23); B Farrell for Lenehan (30); J Queeney for G Reilly (46); P O’Rourke for Kenny (blood sub 57); A Moyles for Queeney (63).

Scorers for Kildare: J Doyle (1-0 pen, 2f), E Bolton 1-2 each; E Callaghan, M O’Flaherty, F Dowling, J Kavanagh, P O’Neill, H McGrillen, R Sweeney 0-1 each.

Subs for Kildare: J Kavanagh for Kelly (24); B Flanagan for White (ht); C Brophy for Dowling (48); R Sweeney for E O’Flaherty (55); O Lyons for Bolton (68).

Referee: Joe McQuillan (Cavan).