Leinster SFC/Kildare v Offaly: Ian O'Riordan on John Crofton's hard task to revive Kildare

Only those with a good head for time and place probably remember exactly when and where Mick O'Dwyer was introduced as the new Kildare football manager. Apparently it was the autumn of 1990, in a Newbridge hotel. But the details aren't important. O'Dwyer's arrival marked a turning point in Kildare football.

Kildare hadn't won a Leinster title since 1956, losing six provincial finals between 1966 and 1978, and probably reached a low point just before his arrival when losing the quarter-final to Wicklow.

By the summer of 1998, however, O'Dwyer was orchestrating Kildare's best championship run in nearly 50 years. Although they narrowly lost to Galway in the All-Ireland final, their Leinster title victory was greeted like the second coming, and for the first time in championship history they'd beaten the three previous All-Ireland winners - Dublin (1995), Meath (1996) and Kerry (1997).

When O'Dwyer finally moved on in 2002 - across the border to Laois - Kildare were facing the inevitable. Following the O'Dwyer era was going to be very difficult. Youth was seen as the way forward, and Pádraig Nolan became the new manager.

Nolan tried to instil some continuity by bringing in Willie McCreery, Kildare's regular midfielder throughout the O'Dwyer era, as one of his selectors. As we now know, that ticket didn't quite work out.

"What Micko did will never be equalled," says McCreery, who spent only a year of Nolan's three years as a selector. "Unless of course Kildare go on and win the All-Ireland. That's going to be very hard to do, especially these days.

"When Micko came in he did change everything for Kildare football. The first thing he did was to get the full respect from everyone in Kildare. Everyone listened to him, including the county board.

"And if Micko said there were no challenge matches then there were no challenge matches. That was a big difference. Other managers had just been walked over, and the county team wasn't really given the full support.

"He also got everyone to rally around him, and of course all the players wanted to play under him. Micko used to leave his place at 10 past two, as he'd tell us, and be in Newbridge at 10 to seven. That included one quick stop for a cup of tea.

"We'd come in at the same time, maybe after a hard day's work. I have manual work and usually had a gruelling day. But his enthusiasm would always lift you. He'd always be at you to move it on."

Working with Nolan helped McCreery realise exactly what it was O'Dwyer brought to Kildare football, and exactly why Kildare will have such a hard time repeating that great era.

"I still feel Kildare were very lucky to get the crowd of lads we did at that time. I was just talking about it the other day, playing golf with a few more of the ex-players. We were just saying we were lucky to have such a good bond together.

"There wasn't one messer on that team, and everyone was just delighted to play a part and give it their full commitment. No one was just there to say he was on the panel. And I still think that was a huge difference.

"It was a great blend of players as well. We'd no one particularly gifted player, and we were very lucky to have Glenn Ryan as our captain. His commitment was huge, and still is.

"But the other big difference was Micko brought our fitness to a whole different level. No Kildare team was ever that fit, and I think if any other manager had even tried to do what Micko did they would have been seen as an idiot. But when Micko asked us to do it, we all believed in it.

"If you go back to the Kerry and Dublin teams of the 1970s and 1980s, that's why they were so far ahead of everybody else. Because of their fitness. Micko brought us up to that level, which we needed to get to.

"The Dublin and Meath teams of our era were way ahead of us, and we needed to surpass that to have any chance of beating them.

"And Micko has done exactly the same thing with Laois. He turned them around for the same reasons, so obviously you have the say the Micko factor was huge in our success."

The levelling off of fitness standards across all counties makes it more difficult for any team to match the major leap forward Kildare made under O'Dwyer.

This year, John Crofton, a former Kildare full back and a selector under O'Dwyer, has taken charge, and he is enough of a realist to know that level of success won't come easy.

In recent weeks the Kildare minors and under-21s lost to Meath and Longford respectively in the Leinster championship and the fact is Kildare have still never won a National Football League title. It's possible O'Dwyer set the bar unrealistically high.

"What he (O'Dwyer) did with us was like bringing a third-division team to win the Premiership," says McCreery.

"That's what Kildare were before he arrived. Only journeymen, being stepped over by all the counties on their way to a Leinster final.

"It's tough going into the Kildare management after him, and in hindsight it wasn't something I really enjoyed."

He does not agree that Kildare have been unlucky in the years since O'Dwyer's departure: "Micko's thing always was that excuses were made by losers, and I still believe that. You never hear of a winning team with an excuse."

Having said all that, McCreery is not without optimism:

"The way Leinster is set up this year, if we get over Sunday you just don't know what might happen.

"Offaly will be very hard to beat. They've had a game already and that's always worth around three points, and they'll start off so much quicker.

"But I think if Kildare can stay with Offaly they'll give them a right run, and Leinster is wide open after that. If Kildare get past Offaly I think they'll improve by 30 or 40 per cent."