A disastrous league campaign saw them relegated to Division 3 after seven successive defeats before Glenn Ryan’s men eventually stopped the rot as they survived a nervy Leinster SFC quarter-final against Wicklow.
That set up a Leinster semi-final date with Louth but their shooting boots were not brought to Croke Park on that occasion as they slumped into the Tailteann Cup with morale seemingly on the floor.
They emerged a transformed side last Saturday evening, however, when notching a whopping 3-25 in a scorching opening to the second-tier competition against Longford.
Times have been particularly tough this year, though, with Lilies’ ace Kevin Feely revealing he had little interest in showing his face around his native Athy amid their slump.
His outlook is now on the up after players and management “stuck together” during turbulent times to find their way out on the other side but it has been anything but easy at times.
“It’s brutal. I’ve been here nine years and this has been by far and away the worst it’s ever been in terms of not wanting to be around Kildare people and not wanting to show the face and that kind of thing,” Feely said of the criticism.
“It would have been very easy for the squad to turn on itself, turn on management and vice versa and for things to get ratty in that way. It would seem that we’ve circled the wagons very well and stuck together and managed to refocus our goals to the reality of where we were after the Louth game.”
Adapting to the Tailteann Cup rather than competing in the All-Ireland SFC series, as they did last year, was something which they quickly had to get their heads around as their off-colour displays were the reason why they ended up in the second-tier competition.
“A few of the leaders in the group were just saying in the very next session after the Louth game, ‘Lads, we need to accept where we are now’,” Feely said.
“‘You’re either proud to play for Kildare and proud of being from Kildare or you’re not and if you are, you do your absolute best to leave the jersey in a better place for next year’. I think lads took that on board and respected it.”
A good start is half the battle but Feely has no problem admitting that he feared they may be on the wrong end of another Tailteann Cup giant-killing act if they didn’t get their house in order.
“The nerves were definitely there in that we saw what London did to Offaly and I was thinking, ‘Lord are we going to be in the same boat here?’ so we were really mentally switched on and switched in,” the 31-year-old said.
“There would have been a lot of lads very tense coming into that game that we’re not going to express ourselves the way that we feel like we should. I was very nervous coming into it,” he said.
The familiarity of playing a championship game at the county’s centre of excellence seemed to help their scoring efficiency – up at a staggering 80 per cent – in what was their “first real home game in a long, long time”.
The redevelopment of St Conleth’s Park has seen the Lilies mixing between Netwatch Cullen Park in Carlow and Kilkenny’s Nowlan Park for home games but Feely hopes that a comprehensive victory can now ease their burden.
“Just chatting a few of the lads there and they were saying, ‘Jesus that’s a weight off the shoulders to know that we can do that’,” the former soccer pro said. “Hopefully that’s something everyone carries into this next week and just plays with a little bit more freedom in the knowledge that we can still do what we’re capable of.”
Their next outing will be a unique one in many ways as they head down to the “unfamiliar opposition” of Waterford hoping to secure their qualification place with a game to spare.
It will also be a homecoming of sorts for Feely as he heads back to a county where he spent the first 16 years of his life – he grew up in Tramore – with plenty of happy memories already in Fraher Field, albeit with the small ball.
“The last time I played there would have been schools matches with Tramore CBS, hurling pretty much all of the time, U-14 and U-15 games. I’m really looking forward to going back there,” he said.
