THIS was a dismal sporting weekend all round for Kildare, yet while the Gaelic footballers have little to look forward to until next year after their defeat in Thurles, the players and management of Kildare County at least have a league season full of promise in front of them.
Of course this was of little comfort to the players - and the sizeable travelling Kildare County support - at Belfield UCD last Friday night, as County went crashing out of the FAI Cup at the first hurdle.
Two first half goals from Robert Doyle was enough to defeat a very game and workman-like County, who had much of the possession during the 90 minutes but could not get behind the UCD defence as often as Dermot Keely would have liked.
Doyle’s two long strike’s on 26 and 40 minutes showed the Kildare defence to be as flat as the countryside in Holland. A long ball over the top was misjudged by Kildare centre half Damian Maher and the UCD forward Doyle was in to loop his shot over the head of keeper Tadhg Murphy on 26.
Well worth their lead UCD looked like they had the beating of Kildare’s defence. However the Thoroughbred’s struck back almost instantly after Shay Zellor was taken down in the UCD box in 27. As cool as you like John Ryan slotted the ball home low and hard and Kildare were back in the game.
On 40 another long-range clearance from the UCD defence again sailed over the County defenders heads, and Doyle was in at the end of it to take a snap shot and catch Tadhg Murphy off guard.
The game had started so well for the Kildare keeper after he had saved a UCD penalty in the second minute of the game. UCD won the early spot kick after Gavin Dykes pulled down the UCD No. 7, however Murphy saved Doyle’s resulting spot kick.
County had a huge amount of possession in the second half of the game however the questions they were asking of the UCD defence were not searching or precise enough. Rather long aimless passes were raining in on the UCD defence as the Kildare forward line chased everything.
Switched to the right hand side for the last 45 minutes, Gavin Doyle found allot of space in front of the UCD defence. However the Kildare wide player found it hard to break through the tight UCD defence. His shots from the 20 yards plus range on 70 and 72 minutes went harmlessly wide.
In the final moments of the game with the Kildare players moving closer and closer to the cup exit door, County finally started to get more quality efforts on goal.
On 87 minutes Dykes headed over from a corner, in injury time Doyle had a shot blocked when the UCD keeper fell bravely to his feet. On 93 minutes Damian Maher had a good header which the UCD keeper held and the final whistle blew instantly.
Despite a huge percentage of possession and a high number of attempts at goal - most harmlessly from outside the box - County did not do enough to win this game, however a replay would have been a better reflection of the 90 minutes.
Showing a huge capacity for work, Keely will no doubt be a little worried that his team could not turn their high amount of possession into good quality chances. However we should not forget that UCD are a solid Premier Division outfit and County are only in existence for three months.
Now all eyes will be turned to the First Division Cup and after that the First Division proper and Kildare County can look to the future with some confidence after another brave and battling performance against one of the countries top flight teams.
