The refurbished and revamped Cedral St Conleth's Park has been officially opened today, playing host to the Kildare senior football final.
The refurbishment at the Newbridge venue took just over 18 months, having begun at the end of March last year, and has seen a new 3,000-seater stand constructed with the overall cost of the project coming in at around €18m.
The overall capacity of the ground is set to be about 15,000 with new dressing rooms in the main stand, alongside officials' changing rooms and the Club Kildare Lounge.
The stadium boasts state of the art new floodlights while the pitch has been relayed and widened and will now be watered with supplies from a new irrigation system.
The Lilywhites will hope the return of their home ground will help the county's footballers to arrest a recent slump that has seen them relegated to Division 3 of the National Football League.
The grounds were at the centre of a major row in 2018 when Kildare beat Derry and Longford in the qualifiers and drew a home tie against Mayo in Round 3.
The GAA, however, said the game would be played in Croke Park.
Kildare's manager at the time Cian O'Neill insisted that Mayo could go to Croke Park but Kildare would be turning up in St Conleth's Park.
He was later interviewed on RTE's Six One News where he coined the phrase 'Newbridge or Nowhere'.
A stand-off followed and after much mediation and many meetings, Croke Park fixed the game for St Conleth's Park.
The game was a sell-out, and Kildare beat Mayo on a score line of 0-21 to 0-19.
