TG4 All-Ireland Ladies’ SFC relegation qualifiers
Donegal 0-9 Kildare 0-8; Tipperary 1-15 Laois 1-4
DONEGAL held on to their senior championship status with a hard-fought one-point win over Kildare in Saturday’s relegation qualifier at Kingspan Breffni.
Six points from the boot of Susanne White were crucial for John McNulty’s side, who will be able to continue their rebuilding next season still playing top-tier championship football.
Donegal trailed by a point at half-time, 0-6 to 0-5, but a strong start to the second half saw them hit four points without reply.
Kildare, meanwhile, failed to find the target until the 52nd minute and despite hitting the final two points of the game, the Ulster side hung on for the win.
The relief and the emotion at the final whistle just hit them, said White, who felt they were good enough to stay up in senior and this win proved that.
“When the final whistle went, there was a lot of pride and emotion, relief too, because when you come into a relegation game, it’s a dog battle, it can go either way and that’s what it was. It went down to the wire,” she said.
“We went three points up in the second half but knew Kildare were going to come at us again and throw everything at us, which they did, but we were able to withstand that pressure.
‘‘When you look back at our second-half performance, we just came out fighting, we fought for every ball, we put Kildare under serious pressure in their own half and pressed high and it showed how much we wanted it.
‘‘Kildare missed a good bit in the first half, whereas we missed a good bit in the second half, but I think ultimately, we just worked that bit harder at different times of the game and we were able to keep Kildare out.
“It means a lot because I believe we are good enough to play senior championship. I think we have shown that this year, that we can go toe-to-toe with bigger teams, we played Kerry and Armagh, and those games could have went either way; we just didn’t get it right against Waterford and we know it wasn’t good enough. When you look at the group stages you are either in an All-Ireland quarter-final or a relegation game, there is no room between.”
Kildare will now battle it out with Laois for survival next Saturday.
At John Lockes GAA club in Callan, Co. Kilkenny, Tipperary got the better of Laois by 1-15 to 1-4.
A goal in the second minute by Angela McGuigan helped Tipperary build a 1-11 to 0-00 interval lead and really there was no way back for Laois after that.
Laois didn’t register their first score of the game until Andrea Moran pointed a free four minutes after the restart.
Tipperary, with Emma Morrissey finishing with 0-5 from play and Ashling Moloney shooting 0-6, five of them frees, pulled away again and were never threatened.
Laois never gave up and Katie Donoghue found the net in the closing stages.
