Kildare manager Brian Dowling has hit back at Babs Keating for his claim earlier this week that the county face \u201ca crucifixion\u201d in the Leinster SH championship next year.<\/p>\n
Tipperary\u2019s two-time All-Ireland winning manager Keating, who lives in Kildare, fears the Lilywhites will be fodder in the competition despite lowering standards in the competition.<\/p>\n
Speaking to this newspaper, Keating said: \u201cLooking at Naas and St Martin\u2019s (Leinster club SHC semi-final last Sunday), Naas have been at the top of the ladder in Kildare the last number of years but they were so far away from the principles that govern teams at the highest level.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not saying St Martin\u2019s are top of the pile but Naas were giving away frees you\u2019d see a junior B team doing and that\u2019s a Naas team that have eight or nine in the Kildare team going into the Leinster championship next year. It\u2019s going to be a crucifixion.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dowling, in an interview with KCLR, pointed out that Naas were without three of their inter-county players against the Wexford champions. He dismissed Keating\u2019s comments but added Kildare will want to prove him wrong.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard not to read him \u2014 about 10 people sent them on,\u201d said Dowling of Keating\u2019s remarks. \u201cI\u2019ve seen a lot of stuff Babs has said down through the years and if he was praising us, I\u2019d actually be worried because I wouldn\u2019t take anything that man says too seriously.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, he\u2019s trying to stay relevant, he\u2019s trying to stay important. He\u2019s come out with absolutely stupid things in the last number of years\u2026 look, I\u2019m not worried about him.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
As Joe McDonagh Cup champions, Kildare have the right to compete in next year\u2019s Leinster SHC, Dowling stressed. \u201cWe are where we deserve to be. We\u2019re under no illusion it\u2019s going to be tough for us next year. We\u2019ve a huge battle ahead of us, but if you\u2019ve earned the right to get up there, you deserve the respect to be there.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re looking forward to it. Huge games ahead in Division 1B and Leinster but we\u2019re looking forward to it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Highlighting Kildare\u2019s Conan Boran, James Burke, and Cathal Dowling were missing from the Naas team in Wexford this past weekend, Dowling added: \u201cNaas are a different team than we are. That\u2019s his (Keating\u2019s) opinion. Everyone\u2019s entitled to their opinion. We\u2019ll just have to try and prove him wrong later in the year. I\u2019m not going to worry about him \u2013 we\u2019ll worry about ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kildare manager Brian Dowling has hit back at Babs Keating for his claim earlier this week that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1965,1128,61,60,850,112],"class_list":["post-162926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-hurling","tag-football","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sport","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}