Score-shy Kildare need to capitalise on natural advantages of their full-forward line

Kildare need to reinvent their attacking gameplan with an emphasis on goals if they're to beat Louth and start delivering on an underage structure which has rivalled Dublin's since 2013.

Over the past two seasons their scoring average is lower than every team other than New York, London and Waterford. Managing to raise a green flag in less than a quarter of their games, the number of matches they've played without scoring a goal in that period is the highest in the country.

Relegated to Division Three, and scraping past a Division Four-bound Wicklow in their championship opener – Kildare surely should be enjoying the early stages of a golden generation instead.

While Dublin have won four Leinster minor titles, six Under-20s and two All-Ireland U20s since 2013, Kildare have the same amount of minor Leinsters and U20 All-Irelands. As well as four provincial wins at the U20 grade, while Naas CBS became the first Kildare school to win the Hogan Cup in 2022, a year after losing the final.

Dublin's current record-breaking team has been backboned by those underage successes, with the likes of Jack McCaffrey, Brian Fenton and Paul Mannion in 2014, and Eoin Murchan, Con O'Callaghan and Brian Howard in 2017 all graduating to the senior ranks with an U20 All-Ireland in the back pocket. Whereas Kildare come into this afternoon's clash against Louth in the unfamiliar role for this match-up of underdog, so what's going wrong?

Since the start of 2023 the Lilywhites are averaging 0-13 per game, a total which is unlikely to beat a Louth team who are the top goalscorers in the 2024 league and championship so far with 17 in eight games. You'll have to go down to the teams at the very bottom of Division 4 to get a lower scoring average than