Two things you need to know about Tomás O’Connor and his place in the world, both of them to do with his afternoon in Croke Park against Tyrone a fortnight ago.

One – he didn’t kick the ball. Not once, not even a little bit. He fought for it, caught it, carried it and laid it off or got fouled with it in his hands. He didn’t go out to not kick the ball but that was how the day broke down for him in the end. Bullets flew all around him but he kept his gun holstered.

For all of Kildare’s intents and purposes, this little factoid means nothing and it means everything.

Yes, they have a full-forward who doesn’t kick the ball very much, if at all. But – and this is the second thing you need to know about that league Division Two final – his contribution doesn’t suffer for the fact.

“Every time he got on the ball against Tyrone we got a shot at the posts,” selector Niall Carew points out.

In the skyline of the Kildare forward line, O’Connor is the Eiffel Tower – unmissable and unmovable, the main attraction that gets the most attention. He doesn’t mind it at all, welcomes it in fact. He spent far too many years on the outside looking in to be complaining about it now.

“My role is in the full-forward line – the lads look up and find me and I tend to give it off quite a bit as they’re running onto it. But I can score too. I scored five points in the league as well. In the two Tyrone games in the league, I think I only kicked it once in the two games. But that’s because I don’t really drift out the field that much. The score is more likely to come with lads bursting off me.

“Midfield is where I played a lot growing up and I enjoy it there. But full-forward at inter-county level is a great position to play because the ball coming into you is great and you’re a target man. I don’t mind the type of ball that’s coming in. High or low, it makes no odds to me – I’ll fight for it and try to win it either way. You have to be prepared for it either way. You can’t be expecting high ball in all the time.”

This is O’Connor’s second or arguably even third coming with the Kildare senior panel and definitely the first time he’s been able to make it stick.

His debut came way back in 2005, an off-the-bench cameo in a qualifier defeat to Sligo. He was a leggy teenager then, only a year out of school and Kildare were nowhere that could be classed as helpful to a young boy trying to learn a man’s life.

Laois had given them 12-point toasting in the Leinster semi-final and the Sligo defeat was Pádraig Nolan’s last game in charge.

The distance from there to here – nobodies whose summer ended on July 2nd to fourth favourites for the All Ireland – would have seemed a few lifetimes away back then.

O’Connor went through more of them than most, tearing cruciates in both knees along the way and even considering a future across the border in Offaly at one point.

“I tore the cruciate in 2007 and then came back eight months later and tore the cartilage as well. That took me a long time to get back from. I actually did the cartilage two more times and then did my posterior cruciate in the other knee afterwards against Derry. It’s not as serious as the ACL and I never got it operated on. I built the muscle back up through gym work.”

Out of sight meant out of mind when it came to the county panel and for a while he toyed with the idea of a transfer to Walsh Island to play for the county of his father.

“It was something that I was considering doing because I wanted to play intercounty football and the option at the time was to play with the Kildare juniors. I don’t know if I wanted to do that or not to be honest. But I stuck it out and played with the juniors and eventually got back into the county panel. It was only a kind of a thought in the back of my head, something I had the option of doing because both my parents were from Offaly. I could have done it but in the end I said no and I stuck with Kildare.”

With benefit to all parties, it has to be said. O’Connor’s capacity for winning and retaining possession has given the Kildare attack a focal point that scares the life out of opposition defences.

When he laid waste to the Laois backline in the qualifiers last year, it was a stunning example of what was possible once he found his feet. He hasn’t missed a game since.

“It was a game where I came out playing well and things went right for me because things came off that I tried. They hadn’t come off in some other games when I was trying just as hard. I settled into the position pretty well and I’ve started every championship and league game since. I’d been dropped for the previous game and when I got my chance again, I just said, ‘Right, I have to make this position mine now’.”

Spoken with a conviction that is in no way unique among Kieran McGeeney’s squad. Kildare aren’t a bit shy about the summer that lies ahead – they have desire to burnish their excellent qualifier record and if the season ends with the Division Two trophy as their only piece of silverware, they’ll see it as another year lost.

“We really do want to set out and win something this year,” says O’Connor.

“You do that every year but this year in particular we are definitely after a Leinster or an All-Ireland.” Do that and it won’t bother him in the least whether he kicks a ball all year or not.