After long hard look in mirror, will Kildare rise or face a further fall from grace?

Inter-county managers like to have every last detail relating to their team planned and prepared as best they can. Kildare’s Cian O’Neill is a self-confessed ‘data geek’ and someone who prides himself on the small details, so you can be sure that he steps through every part of gameday in his head in the lead-up to a match.

It is hard to imagine heading into the recent Leinster quarter-final against Carlow that he envisaged his post-match interview including phrases such as ‘outworked’, ‘outfought’, ‘outplayed’, and, to cap it all, ‘catastrophic’ to describe his team’s performance.

His honesty in the aftermath deserves credit but the reality is he could not have dressed up the result and performance any other way.