Kildare have some very good footballers and have shown they can beat an elite team in Mayo. Their performance against Dublin in 2017 looks pretty good in hindsight. There was a real feeling they could kick on from that and their win over Mayo, but they haven’t. They’re punching below their weight currently. However they have as much potential as any current non-elite county because they have a consistently good underage record of late, are well situated geographically and economically and have a potentially massive support base. They have the potential to do what Mayo have been doing for the last seven or eight years. They’re a sleeping giant.
O’Connor is an elite inter-county manager with a long record of success. The main thing an elite inter-county manager can generally do is get players to commit.
What I’m not sure about is how O’Connor’s gruff nature would go down in a county outside Kerry. He strikes me as quite old school in a lot of ways and it’s possible that he could start to alienate players within a relatively short time frame.
But he’s definitely worth a punt because of his consistent record of success.
I don’t buy that excuse at all. If Kerry can win 5 minor AIs in a row, then surely they can turn one of them into an u21/u20 victory. They haven’t even reached an AI final at u21/20 from that vast crop. They were only missing David Clifford and Diarmuid O’Connor this season, and I highly doubt those two would have made up for a 14 point defecit in what was a vastly superior Cork outfit.
He’s the definition of someone who is his own man. Does his thing and wouldn’t really care for what people think of him. His family have no background in GAA and he’s said before he doesn’t take football as serious as other lads. A great mindset to have but by fuck we need him.
It’s important to have somebody the players are comfortable with. Wasn’t Big Dan a kind of co-manager under Derek anyway? A knowledgeable Waterford hurling man once told me that Derek was mentor/father figure to all the city lads but the West Waterford lads didn’t really get Derek. That’s where Big Dan came in.
