In his first interview since the news broke that he is set to become Kildare senior football manager, Cian O'Neill has outlined his ambitions for his new job.

It was announced earlier today that clubs will be asked to ratify the Moorefield clubman for a three year term at a meeting on Tuesday night and, speaking to Kfm radio, the former Kerry selector revealed his reasons for choosing the Lilywhites over the Kingdom.

"It's not often you get the opportunity or the offer to come back and work with your own county," he said.

"When the opportunity came along it was something I said I'd look at and difficult as it was to leave a great set-up that we had in Kerry, albeit after the disappointment of two weeks ago, it was something I couldn't turn down.

"It's your home county, it's where you're from. I'm a Kildare man, I'm a Moorefield man, I'm a Newbridge man and it's my role now to bring everything I have in terms of experience and my background and expertise and, hopefully, bring a lot of quality people along with me to make Kildare a force again.

"For me the real attraction is coming home and really contributing to Kildare GAA. It has been disappointing, not necessarily through anyones fault or no groups fault, just things haven't gone as well as people would have liked, players, supporters, county board alike.

"And I feel that I have the attributes and the experience to try and bring something back to maybe to change the face and the culture within Kildare football. I think that's very important.

"People can talk about setting targets about winning Division 3 and championship but for me it's all about creating that high performance environment and to instill a culture of wanting to win with Kildare as opposed to just wanting to play for Kildare.

"For me that's what it has to be about. I believe the players are there, I certainly believe that there's a huge band of players coming through the underage set-up, through some great teams of the last number of years.

"If I can cultivate those young players coming through in addition to the players that are already there, then I think we can do something special with Kildare in the next number of years."

The enormity of the task in front of O'Neill was illustrated by the Lilywhites' All-Ireland SFC quarter-final collapse against Kerry. The 27-point hammering signalled the end of Jason Ryan's time at the helm.

"It wasn't a fair representation of where Kildare are at in the overall scheme of things," the new man at the helm remarked.

"Things didn't go well for them that day. I've been involved in teams when a match slips away from you. Very quickly you can go from three points down to thirteen points down before you even blink your eye.

"I think that was one of those matches that day and it's very hard to claw back into a match when things are going against you.

"That's not really where I see Kildare but the reality of the fact is we're in Division 3 next year. It's going to be a challenge in Division 3 but that's where we're at and there's no point trying to avoid the fact that that's the standard that's going to be put in front of us. It's up to us to make sure that we have a standard that's above everyone else when we get on to that pitch in all of those seven matches, that we perform to the best of our ability.

"As I said, if that environment, if that culture, if that mindset is there between the management, the backroom, the players, the County Board, bringing the supporters group along, it's that whole kind of unique group working together, almost a perfect storm, well then I certainly think we can make great strides in the next three years."

How did Eamonn Fitzmaurice take the news that he would be leaving the Kerry management team?

"Like a true gentlemen and legend and great friend that he is and I think that's the key thing with Eamonn and myself, we're friends first, colleagues second.

"I would like to think I can bring some of that level of humility, communication, co-operation that he brought to his role with the rest of us in the management, with Diarmuid (Murphy) and Mikey (Sheehy) and all the players and backroom, that I can bring some of that skill set, because we're all different, to the Kildare set-up.

"I learnt a lot down there as I did with the Mayos and Kerrys of the world but he's supported me all the way and said he would continue to do so even though next year it's Munster v Leinster in the All-Ireland semi-final so we'll see how that goes!"

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