{"id":336789,"date":"2026-03-09T11:03:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T11:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/336789\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T11:03:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T11:03:07","slug":"croke-park-doesnt-care-about-carlow-or-kildare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/336789\/","title":{"rendered":"Croke Park doesn’t care about Carlow or Kildare"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carlow manager Pat Bennett says Croke Park “doesn’t care” about raising standards for hurling counties outside the top 10 teams.<\/p>\n

Following a nine-point defeat to Kildare at the weekend<\/a>, only a highly unlikely sequence of results in the final round of games in 1B will see Carlow avoid relegation.<\/p>\n

Kildare had 12 points on the board before their first wide, with Bennett admitting the hosts at Cedral St Conleth’s Park were “very well drilled” and a “grade above” the Barrowsiders on the day.<\/p>\n

In his first season in charge, Waterford native Bennett has played 29 players across five league games, including opportunities for seven Under-20 players.<\/p>\n

With a shallow playing pool to pick from \u2013 the Carlow hurling championship comprises of six teams \u2013 Bennett has little option but to give youth its chance.<\/p>\n

Mount Leinster Rangers provided eight of the match-day 26 on Sunday, with the manager stating that 19 players from his panel of 32 are drawn from just two clubs.<\/p>\n

\"Carlow
\nCarlow manager Pat Bennett<\/p>\n

Bennett believes more needs to be done to raise the standard of the side trying to reach and compete at the highest level.<\/p>\n

“The Tipperarys, the Corks, the Galways, they are going to keep churning out players,” he told RT\u00c9 Sport. “The Carlows, Laois\u2019 and Westmeaths aren\u2019t. They need to be helped.<\/p>\n

“If Kildare go straight back down again (from his year\u2019s Leinster championship), is that going to help them? No. They need to be up there.<\/p>\n

“My thing is, they don\u2019t really care in Croke Park. It doesn\u2019t really make a difference what we do, or what we try to do.<\/p>\n

“They don\u2019t care about a Carlow, a Kildare\u2026if Kildare go down from the Leinster championship, do they worry? They don\u2019t worry.<\/p>\n

“That\u2019s the way they run it. They don\u2019t really care too much so we just keep doing our best.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carlow manager Pat Bennett says Croke Park “doesn’t care” about raising standards for hurling counties outside the top…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-336789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336789","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=336789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}