SHIFTING AMBITIONS
KILDARE MANAGER TALKS TO DAIRE WALSH ABOUT HER TEAM’S STRONG START TO THE DIVISION 2 OF THE LIDL NFL
After a whirlwind 2023 that saw them winning no fewer than three pieces of silverware, this year has seen the Kildare senior ladies footballers once again continuing on an upward trajectory.
Following a nail-biting extra-time success over Clare in a Lidl National Football League Division 3 final a little under 12 months ago, Kildare went on to get the better of Wexford in a TG4 Leinster Intermediate Football Championship decider at Laois Hire O’Moore Park. Having edged out the latter in a tense semi-final, the Lilywhites then got the better of the former side in a gripping TG4 All-Ireland Intermediate Football Championship showpiece affair at Croke Park on August 13 of last year.
Dealing with the step up in all three competitions is something that Lilies boss Diane O’Hora and her charges would have thought long and hard about heading into 2024, but they have taken on the first part of this challenge with considerable aplomb. Thanks to a run of five straight victories in Lidl National League Division 2, Kildare had secured a second-tier final spot and – crucially – promotion to Division 1 in 2025 with a couple of rounds to spare.
With more than one team going up and down between divisions in the current campaign, every point was going to be vital coming into the 2024 edition of the NFL and this was the Lilies’ mindset when they kick-started their Division 2 campaign against Monaghan at Manguard Park in Hawkfield on January 21. Yet with Kildare managing to maintain a winning run that had begun in round five of NFL Division 3 in February of last year, they started to dream of an even bigger goal.
“Every game means a lot more this year, so we did put a lot of effort into being ready a little bit sooner, in terms of having our panel picked a little bit earlier than last year. Because with two teams going down, it meant every single point that you got earlier on in the league was going to be crucial to keeping you safe,” O’Hora explained.
“Obviously coming from Division 3 into Division 2, that’s always the concern. You don’t want to yo-yo. You don’t want to be a team that goes up, comes down, goes up, comes down. Because where’s the progress?
“Ultimately, in terms of where we were, our realistic goals were to stay in Division 2, but after the first or second game, obviously we were looking at ‘maybe our goals need to shift a little bit’. To probably having bigger sights, in terms of making the final.”
When Kildare’s promotion back to Division 1 – for the first time since 2012 – was sealed with an emphatic 3-11 to 0-7 triumph at the expense of neighbours Laois at Manguard Park on Sunday, March 3, they had the best defensive record across all four divisions of the Lidl NFL.
The fact that all seven rounds of Division 4 had been played at this point is a slight caveat, but to have only conceded 1-26 (29) in a total of five games is nonetheless impressive. This is something that O’Hora was particularly pleased about as she had identified low concession rates as a key focus for Kildare when she was appointed as their manager – having originally spent a year as a coach under her predecessor Sean Finnegan – in October 2022.
“It was one of the key factors or the first priority when I got the job. I sat down with Con Brennan and Brian Noonan. We literally had a look at where the team was at and we obviously looked at our defending being a priority. In terms of how it compared to where we need to move forward to, and to where we’d come from, from the prior year.”
Moving beyond this year’s NFL Division 2 campaign, O’Hora will be hoping that this defensive solidity can serve Kildare well as they move into the TG4 Leinster Senior Football Championship.
Their promotion from the intermediate ranks means that the eastern province’s top-tier in 2024 will contain no fewer than four teams. In addition to Laois – who themselves were crowned All-Ireland IFC winners in 2022 – Kildare will also be joined by Dublin and Meath, who have been the only counties to secure the All-Ireland senior championship crown since Cork’s most recent success of 2016.
“It’s a huge step up. Two of them [Dublin and Meath] have been All-Ireland champions over the last seven years between themselves. There’s a huge level of experience they have in that. They’ve got a huge basis of strength and conditioning that we’ve only started to build and develop,” O’Hora acknowledged of their forthcoming Leinster opponents.
“They’re years ahead of us in terms of their S&C, realistically, and years ahead of us in terms of experience at that level. The one thing that we know is that we’ll get an honest performance from our team and they’ll give 100%.
“Those that get to start and obviously it’s always a different team that finishes. Anyone that comes into the game will give that level of commitment and they’ll give 100%, but it’s a huge step up.”
O’Hora is also looking at this summer’s All-Ireland series in much the same vein and just like their National Football League campaign, the first plan of action will be to ensure that Kildare can at least retain their status as a senior championship side moving into 2025.
“If you want to look at our goals for the senior championship, it’s to not get relegated back into intermediate. Again, that is going to end up being a realistic goal for us because as I mentioned earlier, it’s the same with the league, there’s so much to play for. It’s different obviously in the men’s, they’ve just got senior. They don’t have grades of football,” O’Hora added.
“For us, we play Leinster and that puts us into specific groups based on how we fare out in Leinster. It matters, you could be in a group with a provincial winner and another provincial loser, whatever the case might be.
“We obviously want to put ourselves into a better position for the championship, but it could be completely out of our hands in terms of how the groups are done. Obviously a realistic target for us with the jumps to senior is to just try and ensure that we remain in senior.”