Kildare boss Brian Flanagan hailed his side’s character as they produced a big last quarter to hold off Westmeath on a historic evening in Newbridge.
Playing their first home game in Leinster for 30 years, it looked as though their poor run of form, having lost three of their last four League games despite winning promotion from Division Three, would continue as Luke Loughlin-inspired Westmeath bossed much of the game and held a three-point lead in both halves.
But Alex Beirne’s goal meant that Kildare were only a point adrift at half-time and things began to stack up for them in the second half. Influential Westmeath midfielder Ray Connellan was forced off through injury, David Hyland fisted Kildare’s second goal after Ben McCormack’s point effort fell short to put them in front and with the game up for grabs in the last 10 minutes, Westmeath’s Nigel Harte was black-carded.
With the home crowd rowing in behind them, Kildare saw it out, though goalkeeper Cian Burke denied Matthew Whittaker a goal that would have forced extra time late on.
“Relief and pride are the two overriding emotions,” said Flanagan after taking charge of his first Championship game. “We wanted to win tonight, we wanted to give the people of Kildare a night like this, we wanted to do it for ourselves as much as anything because we’ve had an interesting couple of weeks leading into it.
“They say you learn a lot more in defeat and that’s fine but sooner or later you have to step up and tonight we did step up and I do think, with 15 or 20 minutes to go, there was just a refusal to accept defeat and lads all over the field, to the boys who came off the bench, just went for it and they did everything they possibly could to get us the victory and I’m delighted we did, so a lot of pride in the boys and then relief that we get to move on here.”
They move on to a Leinster semi-final against Louth or Laois the weekend after next, with the winner guaranteed a place in the All-Ireland series while the loser will go to the Tailteann Cup.
Is reaching the provincial final or avoiding the second tier competition the bigger prize?
“It’s another game, another game in the Leinster Championship,” Flanagan replied. “We’re not trying to avoid anything. We’re taking each game as it comes now and I mean that genuinely.
“Everyone on this side of the draw probably sees the opportunity to get to a Leinster final and no more than Westmeath, we seen tonight as a 50-50 game that if we could tilt the odds in our favour with a couple of things going down the home stretch we’d be on the right side of it. We are. Going into two weeks time, I think it’ll be no different.”
Westmeath manager Dermot McCabe said that the loss of Connellan was “massive”.
He added: “Ray is a big person for us. We lost a lot of experienced people over this last six months in Westmeath and you need as many of your experienced people come Championship.
“It’s different than League and Ray’s a seasoned performer when it comes to Championship.
“I think in the first half, between both teams, there was 28 kickouts and we had won 20 of them. Perhaps we didn’t capitalise enough on that.”
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