Kevin Feely loving new era of midfield 'piggery'

By John Harrington

Kevin Feely’s inter-county football career with Kildare has been given a fresh lease of life by the new FRC rules.

A couple of years ago he considered hanging up his boots, but the advent of the new rules convinced him to stay on with the Lilywhites.

Last year’s Tailteann Cup victory and a county championship success with his club Athy further boosted his enthusiasm levels, and at the age of 34 he’s enjoying his football as much as ever.

Considering he’s one of the best fielders of the ball in the game, it’s no surprise to hear that the element of the new rules he loves the most is the frequency with which kick-outs now go long.

“The more contested ball 100%,” said Feely when asked what appeals most to him about the new rules.

“You went from a point where you maybe were contesting three, four kick-outs a game to 30 now. More often than not, kick-outs are coming long. It's my favourite part of the game and I feel like I have plenty to offer in that regard and then the change to a slightly more hectic game.

“The transitions are quicker, there's more opportunity to move the ball quickly, you need link players in around the middle of the field, which you didn't necessarily need with the old rules because the build-up play was so slow.

“You were coming up the field uncontested whereas now you're being pressed and you need to have options in the middle to link the play.

“Basically, all the stuff that I would have grown up with when I came into senior football initially and that I would have loved about the game so they were all big turning points.”

During the League Armagh manager Kieran McGeeney famously described the battle for possession in the middle third from kick-outs as ‘piggery’, but Feely thinks that does it a disservice.

Sure, it’s a very physical battle, but he also sees it as a highly tactical one too.

“It's really hard to win your own kick-out now,” says Feely.

“Opposition presses are so well organised and usually so big now, so there's a lot more taller players coming back into the game that's for sure. You have to be very innovative to win your own kick-out now or resort to going to an overload and just put it out amongst bodies and hopefully win the break and that's probably the piggery aspect of it.

“But that's enjoyable as well and it's enjoyable to watch that, I think, to see that contest on the ground and in the air. But certainly from what we've come across from the way we've developed our kick-outs, there's so many different ideas being thrown out there as to how you win your own ball, what positions to start in, what positions to move into, screening, blocking, it's kind of opening up the early kick-outs massively now.

“It's probably not as biased towards piggery maybe as he (McGeeney) suggested, there's a lot more tactically involved and I would definitely agree, I would definitely think there's a skill to winning breaking ball 100%, I don't think that's pure chance or luck or anything like that, and that's something that needs to be practised, analysed and worked on. It's more finely balanced probably than just being 100% piggery.”

Feeley is by far the most experienced player in what’s a very youthful Kildare panel and it’s probably no coincidence that a Division 2 League campaign that started very promisingly went off the rails when he was sidelined by a hamstring injury.

He admits relegation to Division 3 was a sickener, but he’s confident they can still make an impact in this year’s Leinster Championship, starting with Sunday’s quarter-final against Laois.

“Yeah, it was very disappointing,” said Feeley of Kildare’s League campaign.

“We certainly thought going into the start of the season that we'd have enough to stay in Division 2 and then after the first two games we certainly thought at that point we'd have enough to be safe here and potentially push on further. But I think the Derry game seemed to knock us back quite badly.

“We got suspensions and injuries out of that. That loss very disappointing because we had the elements in the second half and we would have expected to have won that game and ended up losing by two or three points.

“It seemed to turn Derry's season and then it turned our season the wrong way, if that makes sense. With a couple of lads injured then against Cavan, we put in a really, really disappointing performance and it just seemed to knock the confidence of the group completely for the next two or three games.

“I suppose you really felt how young of a group it was then and they say confidence in youth is fairly fragile. It can either be sky high or the other way and we learned that lesson fairly harshly midway through the league and weren't able to turn it around quickly enough.

“Although, we'd be fairly content that we showed a bit of resilience towards the end and that we played way, way better against Louth than we had been in the second half against Cork. I know the game was won at half-time but our performance improved so much in the second half and that led to a much better performance against Louth as well.

“Extremely disappointed with the bare facts of it but we still think there's enough there that we can kind of turn things around and put in a good Leinster championship.”