All-Ireland SFC Round 2B<\/p>\n
KERRY 3-22 KILDARE 0-17<\/p>\n
By Ger McNally at Cedral St. Conleth’s Park<\/p>\n
Kerry reignited their All-Ireland title defence with a commanding victory over Kildare, finishing strongly with three goals in the closing quarter in front of almost 10,000 spectators at Cedral St Conleth\u2019s Park.<\/p>\n
Goals from David Clifford, Diarmuid O\u2019Connor and substitute Gavin White ultimately put an emphatic gloss on the scoreline, although the outcome had long appeared inevitable.<\/p>\n
Playing with the aid of a strong wind, Kerry made their intent clear from the outset, racing into a six-point lead with a string of early scores, including two two-point efforts from Joe O\u2019Connor and Dylan Geaney.<\/p>\n
Kildare\u2019s resistance during the opening half was largely driven by Jack Robinson, who, despite carrying a heavily strapped hamstring after an injury-hit campaign, impressed with five points. His fifth score, midway through the half, cut the deficit to four (0-11 to 0-7), but Kerry soon reasserted control.<\/p>\n
The visitors finished the half with a flourish to lead 0-16 to 0-8 at the interval, with scores shared throughout the team. While Mark Dempsey did a solid job in limiting David Clifford\u2019s influence to two first-half points, Kerry\u2019s depth ensured they remained comfortably in front.<\/p>\n
Brian \u00d3 Beaglaoich was particularly prominent in the early stages of the second half before becoming the first of three players withdrawn as a temporary change as Kerry used eight replacements in total.<\/p>\n
Kildare briefly threatened a revival when Darragh Kirwan landed a superb two-pointer in the 51st minute to reduce the gap to eight. However, that proved as close as they would get.<\/p>\n
Within four minutes, Kerry struck decisively. Clifford intercepted a short kickout by Eoin Sheehan and surged through to finish clinically to the net. Almost immediately from the restart, Diarmuid O\u2019Connor added a second goal after a sweeping move, effectively ending the contest.<\/p>\n
Kildare continued to battle, with Kirwan and substitute Brian McLoughlin both adding two-point scores, but Kerry had the final say. Deep in stoppage time, Clifford turned provider, squaring for Gavin White to tap in a third goal and complete a dominant performance.<\/p>\n
The result represents a timely boost for Kerry, with several returning players gaining valuable minutes as they build towards the latter stages of the championship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All-Ireland SFC Round 2B KERRY 3-22 KILDARE 0-17 By Ger McNally at Cedral St. Conleth’s Park Kerry reignited…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-498468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498468","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=498468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}