GROWING UP IN Baltinglass, just 150 yards away from the Kildare border, former Wicklow footballer Kevin O’Brien had front row admission to the rivalry shared between the two counties.
Over the road was the Castledermot GAA club in Kildare and the mingling was constant. Folks from both sides of the divide worked together, socialised together and attended the same schools. Those are O’Brien’s core memories of how the people intertwined back then.
The link carries on today through his nephew Kevin Quinn. A key forward on the current Wicklow team, he kicked two points from frees last weekend as the county earned a stunning victory against Westmeath to progress to the Leinster quarter-finals this Sunday.
Blessington player Quinn will recognise some familiar faces among the Lilywhite opponents from his schooldays in Naas CBS. He was a defender on the Hogan Cup team who reached the 2019 All-Ireland final. Current Kildare senior Paddy McDermott was on that side too.
While O’Brien is confident the Wicklow-Kildare rivalry still has some life in it, he suspects it may have dwindled slightly over the years. There was a time though, when it was full of vibrant energy. No distance was too far for people to travel whenever the counties collided on match day.
“My mother would have Wicklow flags up and the boys coming home from the pub would put up a Kildare one. It was brilliant.
“Everyone worked with each other. It has probably tapered off over the years but it was fantastic back in the day. Everybody went [to the match] whether it was in Aughrim, Newbridge or Portlaoise.”
Wicklow’s first league victory over Kildare was in 1990, but they would have to wait until 2008 for a first championship success over their neighbours who were managed by Armagh’s Kieran McGeeney at the time. O’Brien also had a part to play, serving as a selector to Kerry great Mick O’Dwyer as Wicklow achieved a famous four-point victory in the preliminary round of the Leinster championship at Croke Park.
It was a moment in time for Wicklow. An overly enthusiastic photographer ended up colliding with O’Dwyer in a frantic rush to capture the historic result at full-time, such were the dramatics of it all.
“It was quite remarkable,” O’Brien says casting his mind back 16 years. “We won the [Tommy] Murphy Cup in 2007 which mightn’t mean a lot to others but it meant a lot to the team that was in that time. I think the word we were looking for was momentum and we hadn’t won a championship match in Croke Park.
“Not that we had emphasised that but we had finished the league in the middle [Fifth in Division 4] but everyone knows that when the extra hour and the long evenings come, Micko loves the championship.
“His positivity lifted everything. The players had nothing to lose, it was a brilliant win.”
The sides drew swords again in the championship again the following year in the final round of the old-style All-Ireland qualifiers. There would be no second hit of bliss for the Garden County this time though. Kildare advanced to the All-Ireland quarter-finals after a 1-16 to 2-9 victory.
The recent championship meetings between the counties don’t read favourably for Wicklow either. In 2019, Kildare escaped with a two-point win in Leinster and in the quarter-final stage of last year’s provincial competition, they were 10-point winners in Navan.
The 2024 chapter will certainly be an interesting installment. Wicklow go into the tie on the back of that dramatic victory over Westmeath which provided some much-needed positivity for McConville’s side who ended their Division three campaign as relegation victims.
The result was all the more surprising given that Westmeath had just won the Division 3 final.
Kildare, on the other hand, are an ailing team at present. They too have suffered the drop after a winless run in Division 2. Those disappointing results were played out in the backdrop of some off-field controversy affecting management and the county board.
But as Westmeath learned to their cost, momentum can dissipate as quickly as it emerges.
“If Westmeath was going in to play Kildare at the weekend, I think everyone would be putting huge doubt on Kildare.
“They [Wicklow] certainly can’t be complacent because Kildare have to get their season going.
“Wicklow will have gained confidence and belief in themselves because they have such a young team. I was delighted for the team and the management because they needed a boost. It wasn’t just the way they won, it was the manner they fought for everything. I think they got what they deserved in the end.”
O’Brien points to the youth in the Wicklow as being a cornerstone of that win over Westmeath, while also highlighting the performance of veteran midfielder Dean Healy who finished with 1-2 after his comeback from retirement this year.
“He was immense last weekend, and a huge leader for a number of years for Wicklow and his club St Pats.”
O’Brien has been coming into contact with Kildare people all week, the usual hum of pre-match chat flowing over and back. He fears that Glenn Ryan’s side may hold the advantage over his county in terms of physicality, but the overriding feeling is that neither side will tremble when they touch gloves on Sunday afternoon.
“I don’t think Wicklow will fear Kildare. I don’t think Kildare will fear Wicklow. A lot of these guys has gone to school with a lot of these lads in Naas. So, there’d be a good bit of banter and rivalry built up there.
“Hopefully it will be like it used to be this weekend. I’ve been working with people from Kildare this week and certainly, they’re going to the match because they don’t want to lose to Wicklow.
“To say that the rivalry is dead is nonsense. It’s still brewing.”
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