Injury-plagued Callaghan ready to lead Lilywhites into action

Given his experience, and importance as a player, it didn’t come as a huge surprise when Kieran McGeeney finally confirmed Eamonn Callaghan would take over from Johnny Doyle as Kildare captain.

McGeeney was probably waiting to see if Callaghan — who made his championship debut in the 2003 Leinster final — would recover from his latest groin injury before making an announcement.

This problem has troubled the 30-year-old since last February but he has had hip and groin complaints since 2009.

“I have worked hard to get it fixed but it’s one of those things,” said Callaghan. “I’ll have to deal with it but it’s not affecting me too much now.

“The last year and a half I haven’t been 100% and the aim this year was to spend the off-season getting it right. I got the operation and it didn’t work out and I was unlucky with it.

“I would be looking after myself when I wasn’t training with the stuff I could do. I could swim, cycle and could do my own thing so when I came back I wasn’t too far off the pace. It’s been a hard few months but I’m happy enough with where I am.”

In the meantime, the landscape has changed quite a bit since Cork ran roughshod over their dreams last August. Kildare were down to 14 men for most of the second half but there was a sense of shock about the manner of the 13-point defeat.

“That was our fifth quarter-final and we thought we had matured and were in a good place.

“I thought we were in a goodposition. The league had went well. There were a couple of blips in the championship but after that Cork game it felt like there was a big gap and that we were way off. But I don’t think we were that far off. We had a bad day and Cork had a good day.”

10 of the team that won this year’s Leinster U21 championship has played league and championship, with six of them playing in last month’s Division 1 semi-final. The skipper thinks they’re ready to shine on the biggest stage.

“It’s great to see such a good number of them coming through. Usually with 21 teams you’d be lucky to get one or two but we seem to have got a few players from it. The biggest thing is they are very mature lads for their age and every time they were brought in, they performed,” he reasoned.