Tomas O'Connor has no regrets about his decision to choose Kildare over Offaly.

As the neighbouring counties prepare to meet in Sunday's Leinster SFC quarter-final at O'Moore Park, the big Kildare full forward has revealed how he had toyed with the idea of declaring for Offaly - with whom his father of the same name won an All-Ireland medal in 1982 - before finally establishing himself on the Kildare team last summer after a long battle with injury.

"The option at the time was to play with the Kildare juniors ... because my parents were both from Offaly, it was something that I could have done. But I said 'no', I'll stick with Kildare," the 25-year-old Clane clubman recalled.

"I was involved with Padraig Nolan in 2005, and then I played under John Crofton as well - I played championship under both. Then I ended up tearing my cruciate and tearing cartilage. I had five operations on the right knee ... I was basically two years or more out.

"I tore the cruciate and then I came back eight months later or whatever and tore cartilage straight away, and that took me a long time to get back. I ended up tearing cartilage two more times, and then I tore PCL, the posterior cruciate, in my left knee. I never got that operated on, but that set me back a while as well." Tweet

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