Kildare captain Eoin Doyle’s career nearly came full circle in Salthill on Sunday when a narrow defeat dropped the county into second place in Division Two but with promotion already secured.
Five years ago this week, the talented defender made his debut in the same fixture at the same juncture of the season. On that occasion an injury-time penalty nudged Galway out of the promotion spot and sent Kildare up to the top flight.
Doyle didn’t play this time around, as with the target reached a round early, manager Cian O’Neill rested some of his first team in advance of next Sunday’s Division Two final between the same counties.
It’s been a restless existence for Kildare since 2012 and the six seasons have seen two relegations and three promotions - only in 2013 did they rest easy for a year, in Division One.
This is the second successive promotion but the big influence according to the captain was the fiery start to this year’s campaign with two excellent wins against Meath and Cork that set Kildare up for a successful campaign.
“Coming up from Division three was a help, but the biggest thing that gave us confidence was those first two games, I do think that was the driving force behind it.
“I know we had a good league last year in terms of getting out of Division three, but we still didn’t do what we wanted to do in the championship, and that was maybe at the back of your mind and maybe confidence wasn’t as high as it should have been. When you are getting results, confidence comes with them.”
Twelve months ago the team slipped up in the Division Three final against Clare in what was a prelude to an underwhelming championship. Doyle doesn’t believe the two were linked and says that O’Neill’s management has brought steady, incremental progress.
“Well, it is his second year now. It is definitely a process. We weren’t going to go from getting relegated to Division Three to being the best team that we could be overnight or anything. It is definitely a process. We had an awful lot of young lads brought in over the past two years as well.
“So it takes time when you are brought into a set-up that hasn’t been winning and that maybe hasn’t been as successful as it should be, it takes time to breed that into lads and get them up to the pace of where we need to be.”
Although he accepts that some of the hammerings the county has suffered at the hands of Dublin - in Leinster in 2013 and ‘15 - may have depressed confidence in the team the main problem he says has been inconsistency and a failure to get to grips with how opponents were countering them. After a disappointing defeat by Westmeath Kildare redeemed themselves to an extent in the All-Ireland qualifiers.
"To be honest it wasn't one of our best championships," he says of last year. "There were patches of different games. I think the Offaly game (qualifier) we played in Kildare was definitely close to where we wanted to be in terms of the intensity we brought and the type of football we played and then there was parts of the Mayo game in the second half where we showed glimpses of what we can do.
“I suppose in provincial games we didn’t play to where we wanted to play, we didn’t’ and in fairness to Westmeath they stopped us from doing that and we’ve got to learn how to stop teams stopping us.”
Playing Mayo in Castlebar was the team’s final appointment of the summer and although they rallied well in the second half, a blitz either side of half-time left them too much to do.
“It’s too late to be responding to these things, You have to be proactive and go out first, You do learn a lot I suppose you learn the intensity, it was one thing I took from that game - I felt Mayo brought, a massive intensity right from the first ball that was thrown in.
“From their full forward line back it was just work, work, work and as a result of that I felt they were able to get the scores, find the men in the best position, but that’s not by coincidence. They train like that, they play like that and even at that top level that kind of comes automatic to them and that’s where we’re trying to get to, that from the first time that ball is thrown in that we get to that level straight away.”
AFL Division Two final, 9th April
Galway v Kildare, Croke Park, 2.0
