
Kildare v Louth live score updates from the Leinster Championship semi-final
The match takes place at O'Connor Park in Tullamore, with throw-in scheduled for 2pm. It will be followed by the meeting of Dublin and Meath at O'Moore Park in Portlaoise, where throw-in is at 4pm.
This match is huge because as well as a place in the Leinster final being up for grabs, the last place in the All-Ireland is also on the line, with the losers going to the Tailteann Cup.
Here are the teams:
Kildare: Cian Burke; Ryan Burke, Mark Dempsey, Brian Byrne; Ryan Houlihan, David Hyland, James McGrath; Kevin Feely cpt, Callum Bolton; Colm Dalton, Alex Beirne, Ben McCormack; Ryan Sinkey, Darragh Kirwan, Brian McLoughlin.
Subs: Didier Cordonnier, Niall O'Sullivan, Mick O'Grady, Jack McKevitt, Tommy Gill, Kevin Flynn, Aaron Masterson, Cathal Hagney, Darragh Swords, Niall Kelly, Jimmy Hyland.
Louth: Niall McDonnell, Emmet Carolan, Dermot Campbell, Donal McKenny, Daire Nally, Peter Lynch, Conall McKeever, Tommy Durnin, Andy McDonnell, Paul Matthews, Ciaran Downey, Conor Grimes, Kieran McArdle, Sam Mulroy, Ryan Burns.
Subs: Tiernan Markey, Liam jackson, Anthony Williams, Craig Lennon, Fearghal Malone, Dara McDonnell, Dan Corcoran, Conor Brannigan, Sean Reynolds, Dylan McKeown, Bevan Duffy.
Good afternoon and welcome to our live blog for this Leinster Senior Football Championship semi-final clash between Kildare and Louth.
It's another busy day of GAA action across both football and hurling, with games taking place across the Leinster and Ulster football championships and the Leinster and Munster hurling championships.
Dublin have won the Leinster title for the past 14 years and are expected to do so once again this season.
But there's much more than a final spot against the winners of the Dubs and Meath on the line here as the losers will play in the Tailteann Cup, while the victors will take the last spot in the All-Ireland.
Louth are aiming to reach the Leinster decider for a third year in a row for the first time since 1914, while the Lilywhites last played in a provincial final in 2022.
Just under 40 minutes to go until throw-in!
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Irish Examiner
an hour ago
- Irish Examiner
Eight years, two All-Irelands and five All-Stars, Kerry's David Clifford takes stock of career to date
David Clifford at 26. It's an interesting time to take stock, at the halfway point of an extraordinary inter-county football career. It's eight years since Jack O'Shea, speaking after watching Clifford shoot 1-10 for the Kerry minors in the 2017 All-Ireland semi-final win over Cavan, said that the Fossa phenom was already equipped for senior duty. The Kerry seniors were preparing to play Mayo and O'Shea said he'd start Clifford if he could, 'without a doubt'. The rules prohibited it so a teenage Clifford stuck to minor duty and memorably hit Derry for 4-4 in that year's final. "I'm looking forward to watching him for the next 10 years," said O'Shea at the time. That decade has almost passed and Clifford last month claimed his second All-Ireland senior medal. He has seven Munster medals too, five All-Stars and will probably break new ground as the first three-time recipient of the Footballer of the Year award. But Jacko is still well out in front in the All-Ireland medal count, with seven. So how has the first half of his career been for Clifford, is he happy with everything he has achieved at this stage? "If I am to look back from here, it's been a very fast eight years with Kerry," said the PwC GAA/GPA Player of the Month for July in football. "Jesus, it doesn't seem like I've been playing senior for that long. I still feel 21 or 22 but it's not the case anymore. I don't know, like, you want to be winning All-Irelands and you'd love to win it every year but I suppose you're kind of realising that that's not the case and you kind of understand how hard they are to win." Clifford finished this year's Championship with 8-62 from nine games, comfortably the country's leading scorer with an average of just under 10 points per game. Even accounting for the 14 two-pointers he kicked - again, a record - it's outrageous scoring. What the schoolteacher and father of one can say for certain is that he enjoyed this All-Ireland more than the 2022 win. It was 'relief' back then, just to finally get a medal, while it was more smiles and celebrations across the 2025 campaign. There were plenty of comments about just how much Clifford celebrated his points and goals. "It probably just comes out, particularly the scores in Croke Park," he explained. "The crowd seemed to be behind us and if you can get a score and then get involved with the crowd, it just gives the crowd, and you, an extra lift again. So yeah, it probably just comes out of you at the time and sometimes you're probably over-celebrating and things but at the time it seems to be what's right." Clifford cuts a relaxed figure as his mid-20s eye up his late-20s. Lead him down avenues that he doesn't wish to travel and he's confident enough to immediately cut you off with the same ruthlessness he showed Brendan McCole on All-Ireland final day. For instance, he is asked if he'd fancy any new rules in Gaelic football. "I think we might be better off leaving them alone with all the changes over the last year," he deadpanned. He doesn't see much value in going deep into his apparent mentorship of the younger players in the Kerry panel either. "I don't think I said much to them, to be honest." Yet when Clifford felt a need mid-season to open up and encourage the supporters to get behind the team, he jumped on it. Ahead of the Armagh game, Clifford took the unusual step of publicly urging fans to turn out in big numbers at Croke Park. Did he feel the supporters weren't fully engaged? "Not really, there was a big crowd for the Meath game but we were brutal against Meath," he said. "As a team, we were miles off it. It would have been easy for people to stop coming after that game, that was the thing. It wasn't that they weren't behind us but it would have been easy to stop going to games after that because we were way off it. It wasn't good enough." The no-show against Meath will eventually be forgotten. When the story of the 2025 Championship is reflected upon, it'll be all about the smiles and scores of Kerry's lethal talisman. "There was a lot more joy and a lot more fun associated with it," acknowledged Clifford of 2025. Because of the new rules? "Obviously that made a massive difference," he nodded. "Look, the way the game had gone in the last few years, it became hard to get space. There weren't many kick-pass plays. So it was hard. You were trying to pick your way around it. At the time, maybe you didn't realise how hard it was. When you see the new game now, it's made a huge difference." Back in May, Clifford was only half joking when he lamented how quickly the four-point goal trial had been jettisoned. "I was liking the sound of the four points for a goal," he said at the time. The Football Review Committee had a look at it again recently. Presumably, given his eight goals in this year's Championship, Clifford would favour a rethink? "Possibly, yeah," he said. "Because I suppose at the moment the difference between a two-pointer and a goal isn't hectic. But still, a goal is still...I know it's only worth one more than a two-pointer, but it's just a bit different." And on the Clifford show will go, for the coming weeks and months with Fossa. After games, he will continue to be besieged by kids and autograph and selfie hunters, win or lose. "It can be hard at times, after a loss maybe with Fossa or whatever, and the kids still want their photo," said Clifford. "To try and remove yourself from the loss and understand that the kids just want their photo or whatever it is. You kind of get used to it. I'm not perfect with it. Sometimes you're just not in the form for meeting people or taking photos or whatever but I try, if I can, I try to help them out. I was a young person meeting Kerry players not that long ago, so I understand what it brings to them."


RTÉ News
an hour ago
- RTÉ News
John McGrath: Second half of final beyond 'wildest dreams'
Tipperary's John McGrath has admitted there was an "element of shock" in how the second half of their All-Ireland final victory over Cork unfolded. Liam Cahill's side - clear underdogs before the game and a long shot at the beginning of the campaign - outscored Cork 3-14 to 0-02 in a surreal second half to claim a first All-Ireland title in six years, just 14 months after they had finished bottom of the Munster SHC table. McGrath himself was at the centre of the second-half blitz, scoring the first and third goals and being instrumental in the creation of the second, winning the penalty which saw Eoin Downey sent off before Darragh McCarthy buried it to open up an eight-point gap. The Tipp full-forward, who this week collected the PwC GAA/GPA Hurler of the Month award for July, acknowledged there was an air of disbelief even among the winning team in the midst of the second half. "It's hard to put your finger on. In all the permutations that you're thinking (about) in the weeks leading up, they definitely all cross your mind," McGrath told RTÉ Sport this week. "But the manner in which we won it, I don't think anyone in their wildest dreams would have come up with that scenario. "There certainly was an element of shock. I knew we were relatively well up but to actually see the final score, it was kinda hard to believe that that had just happened. "Sport is funny like that. Everything just started to go right for us at a certain point of that second half. And the exact opposite for Cork at different stages - hitting the post, hitting the crossbar. Them little bits of luck are needed along the way. "But our lads just absolutely powered into that last 35 minutes. To save the best 35 minutes of the year for that time in an All-Ireland final... It's the kind of thing that you hope is going to happen. But how often does that actually come to fruition? It's unreal from that point of view." The prospect of a Tipp All-Ireland victory at any time in the near future seemed very remote at the start of the year. Cahill had faced questions about whether he intended to remain on after a wretched 2024 campaign, in which Tipp were eliminated from the Munster SHC with a game left to play after a frightful hammering at the hands of Cork in Semple Stadium. It was assumed they were deep in the weeds of a protracted rebuild. In that context, the 2025 success has been seen as one of the most abrupt and stunning turnarounds of modern times. Did the players believe they were realistic All-Ireland contenders at the beginning of 2025? "It's always in the back of your mind," McGrath says. "You certainly have a belief somewhere in you or I don't think you'd ever get to a stage of winning anything. "But mainly, we wanted to get competitive, first and foremost. Whatever comes from that, comes from it. We just needed to build ourselves back up. "We were losing games by double digits. More than once. It was about getting back to being competitive. "From that point of view, to where the year actually developed, it certainly is in some ways hard to believe. I'm living in Thurles and you're going down the town and the flags and colour are still up and in some ways, it feels like a bit of a dream. There's huge satisfaction. "After the last couple of years, a lot of lads could easily have let the things slip by a little bit. But I think we had a good bit of pride in ourselves. You want to be competing. We weren't happy looking at everyone else competing for trophies over the last couple of years." "We were losing games by double digits. More than once. It was about getting back to being competitive In some sense, McGrath's own fortunes mirrored that of the team generally. He finishes 2025 as the joint-leading scorer from play in the championship and as one of the contenders for Hurler of the Year. It's a far cry from much of the past three years. The Loughmore-Castleiney man ruptured his Achilles tendon in the 2022 Munster SHC defeat to Clare and the injury had dogged him in the interval. Now three-time All-Ireland champion McGrath, who turned 31 last month, had been reduced to the status of a bit-part player in the 2024 season, with just two championship appearances as a late sub. However, his illustrious club exploits in both codes had nurtured belief at a time when it might have ebbed away. Held in reserve for much of the league, it was the opening Munster SHC game against Limerick, in which he plundered two second-half goals in a rousing draw that proved a turning point. "Even before I had the injury, it [my form] was up and down a little bit for a year or two. The club form was one of the huge things that kept me going. In the back of your mind, you know it's there. "I saw very little league time. It's not as if I was tearing up trees at the time in training either. The lads [in the management team] took a small little bit of a chance on me coming into that Limerick game. "They said 'we're putting you in, you've been there, you have that little bit of experience.' "I probably put a lot of pressure on myself in that game. It was a sliding doors moment. I probably made it out to be a bigger game in my own head than it was. The couple of years before that had been on and off - and off more than on. "At the stage in my Tipperary career that I was at, I kinda needed to do something to remind myself and others what I was capable of. "Thank God, it kind of worked out for me that day. To be back stuck in it at that stage, it's something you don't want to let go of."


The Irish Sun
2 hours ago
- The Irish Sun
Steve Williams tells Shelbourne stars to seize ‘once-in-a-lifetime' European chance
Williams says the Conference League play-off with Linfield is an opportunity the modern squad must savour STEVE WILLIAMS says that going close to the group stages with Shelbourne was not the proudest achievement of his career. But it was the biggest, and he told the modern day Reds to savour every moment of their opportunity now. 2 Former Shelbourne keeper Steve Williams has urged the Dublin-based side to give it a real go in Europe 2 Shelbourne face Linfield in the Conference League play-off aiming to take the club into the group stages for the first Advertisement Shelbourne face Linfield this week and next in the Conference League play-off aiming to take the club into the group stages for the first time in their history. And the game brings back memories of 31 years ago when Shelbourne went close to being the first Irish club to do so in the Champions League. Just 32 clubs reached the promised land in those days and the Reds had a glorious run seeing off KR Reykjavik and Hajduk Split before facing Deportivo La Coruna. Goalkeeper Williams told SunSport: 'They'd been in the Champions League semi-finals the season before that. Advertisement 'I remember watching them against Porto and they could have beaten them. Porto won 1-0 on aggregate and went on to win the final. 'And then lo and behold, we're playing them a few months later for a chance to get into the Champions League group stage.' The first leg at Lansdowne Road was a 22,000 sell-out (terracing was not allowed be used) and Shels then headed for La Coruna in Spain just 90 minutes from glory. Williams continued: 'Half-time in the Raizor, we went to the bathroom and were looking at each other going 'holy s***, we're only 45 minutes from the group stages!' Advertisement 'We'd missed a sitter in the first half, Jay Byrne put a free header wide that you'd always back him to score as well. 'But the last 35 minutes in the second half, Deportivo went up a gear. They showed us that the gap between us was too big. Premier League star, 25, breaks silence on awkwardly-sized shorts after suffering repeated wardrobe malfunctions 'Nowadays, you'd go straight in the Europa group stage if you were in that tie. But we then had Lille in a play-off for that group stage. 'Unfortunately, Lille were really good. I think they were actually better than Deportivo, they were more organised. We drew (2-2) at home and lost (2-0) over there. 'Those games were big. Your whole football life is based on playing the best players in Europe, and sometimes the world. Advertisement 'And we did that for a spell. We didn't do it all of our careers but we weren't outperformed and we put a dot on the map for Irish soccer at the time. 'I think that's why a lot of us stayed in Ireland then when we could have moved to the UK, the chance to do something in Europe was special.' Welshman Williams, who settled in Dundalk when he first moved to Ireland in 1997 and has remained in the town to this day, also acknowledged the financial incentives are there too. He said: 'I think it was just over a €100,000 to win the tie. The Euro had just come in a few years earlier. It wouldn't have paid off your mortgage, but it would have paid a good chunk.' And what happened two years later is why Williams believes Shelbourne's players should relish these moments, as he saw how quickly things could change. Advertisement The goalkeeper won the league - his fifth - with Shelbourne in 2006 that he counts as his proudest achievement. But that was because of the turmoil off the pitch. MONEY MATTERS Williams added: 'We probably only got paid four months that year. I was working in a bar to put fuel in my car to get to Dublin for training, which no one knows. 'I was a full-time footballer…No money coming in, two young children, a mortgage…it was demoralising two years after nearly having your mortgage paid off! 'Myself and David Crawley, who also lived in Dundalk, missed some training sessions because we couldn't afford the petrol. 'But we still won the league. Of all my medals, that is the one that still takes pride of place because of what it took to win it. Advertisement 'It was, I suppose, an end of a chapter too as it was Shelbourne's last league before last year.' And while the League of Ireland has largely moved away from the boom and bust cycle then, Williams insisted that players must take the chance now, because it may never come again. He added: 'The year after we played Glentoran in the first round and won it well, but nothing ever matched the Deportivo year for us anyway. 'It helped me at Dundalk (as goalkeeping coach) as you could see what was needed. We were fit but didn't have the same technical level as Deportivo. 'Now the players are fitter - there is no gap in fitness to the top teams - and technically better as well so it become more a chess game where one thing can change a game. Advertisement 'When Dundalk reached the group stages, I felt that was it. At first we slogged for a few years, lost to BATE and a few others. 'But by the time we played BATE Borisov again (in 2016) we knew how to stay strong defensively, ride out the tough moments and win games. 'Shels….they'll fancy it against Linfield as I do think there is a difference in fitness. But it won't be a big difference.'