EMOTIONS WERE in neutral in both dressing-rooms as Kildare and Meath came to terms with the sense of anti-climax brought on by a draw. In the Kildare camp, corner forward Johnny McDonald looked out from a cut and bruised right eye, philosophical about the result, content with the performance.

"I thought it was a good performance. Meath are All-Ireland champions, a tough team. We answered our critics as regards not having the bottle. People said we didn't have the bottle, I don't think that can be said of us anymore.

"Overall I thought we should have won. It was Meath that got out of jail today, not us, so hopefully we'll do the business the next day. We're well capable of winning it all right but I remember '94, we drew with Dublin in the first round and they murdered us in the replay, so we're not going to have a repeat of that." The eye injury occurred at a critical stage of the second half but the referee, Pat O'Toole, waved play on to a chorus of boos from the Kildare supporters. McDonald wasn't complaining - it was a hamstring strain sustained in the same tackle that forced him ashore, he revealed, not the eye injury.

"I was soloing through and the ball went away from me. I went to go down on it and next thing boom, I felt the belt on the eye. In fairness to the referee, he probably didn't see it because the defender was behind me so he probably wouldn't have had a clear view of the incident."

Mick O'Dwyer, meanwhile, was still feeling the pressure, beads of sweat rolling down his face in the sauna-like dressing-room. "For us a draw was a major achievement," he said. "We're looking forward now to the replay.

Kildare, he agreed, had wasted a lot of possession but, as ever, he was quick to defend his players. "Meath kicked away a lot of possession too, they kicked a lot of bad balls away. That game was played at top pace today, you wouldn't get faster or fitter teams out on that pitch, they were travelling at top speed, and in a high-powered running game like that the odd few passes must go astray, it's to be expected. But overall I thought our team played exceptionally well.

Do you have the self-belief to actually beat Meath now? The Kildaremanager had been in a sanguine mood until then. Sensing some hidden implication about his team's character in the question, he boiled over: Where do you get that old kind of stuff - the self-belief? You make up your mind whether you think we have or not. You were looking out at them today.

"You're all the time criticising Kildare tfrat they haven't this, they haven't that. They played with fire and guts and gave a great performance out there. Is that not enough for ye? I mean we were playing the All- Ireland champions.

Corner back Davy Dalton, who played flawlessly when moved to full back, was showing the strain after 70 minutes of attrition in the sun.

"We were trying not to waste the ball," he explained between gulps of water. "If we have it at least they can do nothing with it. It's a thing that you can overdo and underdo and probably at times we overdid it and at times we did okay. You're fever going to play it perfectly."

Captain Glen Ryan, who started the game with strapping on his injured hand, took an early knock to the upper leg which required a heavy bandage but soldiered on to the end. Nor was he especially pleased when the end did come. "No, not in the position we were in. We were inside their 21 I think. I never saw it happen before."