Underdogs Galway all set to test the mettle of fancied Lilywhites

Dara Bradley

MOST football people will remember the last time a Kildare team were raging hot favourites heading into an important inter-county championship clash with Galway.

No need to gloat . . . but the bookmakers were wrong, the Lilywhites wilted, and Galway bridged a 32-year gap to win the 1998 All-Ireland senior football final.

In 2000, the last time the two counties crossed swords in championship action, it was at the penultimate stage of the senior All-Ireland series. The bookies’ forecast was reversed, Galway were favourites, but the result was the same, Galway won the semi-final.

Obviously those results, on the surface, matter little this weekend when Galway’s young guns face Kildare in the All-Ireland U21 semi-final joust on Saturday (2pm) in Tullamore; after all, both set of players were still only in primary school back then.

It may matter less that the last time these two sides met in the All-Ireland semi-final of an U21 championship – way back in 1992 – Galway defeated what was then touted as one of the best ever U21 sides to emerge from Kildare, a side that had beaten a fancied Dublin outfit in the Leinster final.

Who cares, you say? So what?

Those three results matter little if you discount tradition . . . but tradition matters in football. Tradition matters to Kildare, who will be hell-bent breaking it, breaking with the tradition of losing to Galway in important championship games. And tradition matters to Galway, too. Because of that winning tradition against Kildare, there’s no reason why Galway should fear them this weekend.

Galway may well be underdogs, rightly so; Galway may have a healthy respect for them, they’d be stupid not to. But they won’t fear them because tradition tells us they shouldn’t fear them. Captain Fintán Ó Curraoin said as much after the Connacht final.

“That’s the attitude you want from lads, and that’s the attitude we have,” said manager Alan Flynn. “If we go down there and stand looking at them or are in awe of them then we might as well stay in Galway. The lads will go out there and have a cut at them and rattle them and see what that brings us . . . we know if we improve on the last day and play to our ability, then we have skilful lads and we’ll be in with a shout.”

Kildare’s one and only All-Ireland title at this grade was won in 1965 but it’s easy to see why the county is abuzz with anticipation that this year will be their year.

Well-respected Kildare senior boss, Kieran McGeeney, also heads the U21s, and he’s blooded a lot of youngsters into the senior set-up this year – Paul Cribbin, Mark Donnellan, Niall Kelly, Daniel Flynn and Paddy Brophy all started for Kildare in their defeat to Tyrone in the semi-final of Division One of the National Football League last weekend.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.