Carlow manager Turlough O'Brien joined Thursday's Off the Ball ahead of the opening round of Super 8s this weekend.

Kildare have been somewhat the Cinderella story this season after dumping Mayo out of the Championship after a public tug-of-war with the GAA over the use of Newbridge as their home venue. 

Carlow sent Kildare packing to the qualifiers earlier this season but O'Brien was quick to indicate that much hasn't changed since. 

"It's not a different group of players - it's more or less the same team that played against us," he told Nathan. "Our performance against Kildare that day was nearly a perfect performance from our perspective.

"Everything went right for us on the day - we hadn't a wide that day and we were really, really up for the game and coming into the game, maybe Kildare underestimated us a little bit. 

"But having said that, I think we ran out comfortable winners in that game and if it had gone on any longer - we would have won by more. So, where are Kildare at? They've had a good run through the qualifiers. The Newbridge venue thing was a big galvanising thing for them - they needed something to hang their hat on and I think that was it and it galvanised them.

"They struggled over Longford too so I don't think they're maybe the team that people are talking them up to be at the moment. They have a lot of very, very good individual talent and are a superbly conditioned team - they can cover the ground.

"They have some really top talented players but they're not consistent in my opinion and that comes back to haunt them time after time. 

"I just feel that again, they're very open at the back. We exploited that very, very well in the opening round of the Championship and when teams run at them - I think they struggle with that. 

"Because they're attacking from the back - they leave themselves wide-open as well. There's a certain naivety about Kildare, I think they always feel they can win the Leinster Championship and go further and they haven't really followed through on that.

"They've played second fiddle to Dublin in Leinster obviously and it's a great Dublin team but there's something that seems to be missing in Kildare and I don't know what it is because they have all the talents and you'd love to see them really progress because they can play some fantastic football when they're on-song, as they did against Mayo and Fermanagh, and it's hard to know.

"I just think they'll find it difficult in the Super 8s because I think that Monaghan will have their measure - Monaghan are very strong defensively and have a lot of attacking strength as well.

"And then they play Galway in Newbridge and Galway beat them down there in the league and the way Galway are set up - Kildare will find them very hard to break down," he added.

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