Tobin: When going got tough, we got going

The old warrior with the bad back takes his place beside an enthusiastic freshman who has never witnessed a day like this.

David Gallagher and Donnacha Tobin will have seen the game differently before throw-in — one through the eyes of revenge and redemption, one through the eyes of youthful fear-free hope. But afterwards, both goalkeeper and wing-back saw it the same.

“It’s brilliant to be a part of,” said Tobin. “We’ve been really pushing each other on in training and it makes the matches all the easier. A Leinster final was what we wanted and now we are getting ready for it.

“What happened in the first half, we were a point up and maybe we should have been further ahead. We just had to refocus, you can’t spend half-time worrying. We had to focus on the positives and go back out and get our game going again. We were confident the whole way through.”

Gallagher added about Kildare’s fortunate effort that was an own-goal by the time it crossed the line: “There’s no point worrying about the goal they got either. These things happen. You make a save and it goes in. Micky Burke didn’t mean it anymore than I meant to drop the ball against Carlow.

“As I always say, fate can play a bitter part but when you look at it, maybe that wasn’t a bad thing against Carlow. And when you look at the result last night, Laois struggled to beat them so maybe they were underrated by people, but we needed an extra game too.

“But championship is championship and form goes out the window. We turned up prepared here and hoped that on the day that was good enough. And after they got the goal, the lads had to knuckle down, we were two points down and they got us through to the end.

“A goal like that can hurt but we are long enough around, there’s an honest bunch of guys in there and I knew they could drag us out of a hole. They did that. Thankfully”.