Dermot Earley is expected to be fit for Kildare's All-Ireland SFC quarter-final showdown with Meath on Sunday.

The All-Star midfielder tweaked his hamstring during last weekend's win over Monaghan and was forced off after 57 minutes, but the injury is not considered serious enough to keep him out of Sunday's game.

Ken Donnelly is the other injury concern for manager Kieran McGeeney, but the versatile forward has already confounded medical advice by featuring in recent weeks despite rupturing knee ligaments, and is expected to see action off the bench again.

Speaking at yesterday's launch of the annual MBNA Kick Fada competition in Bray, Earley was keeping his fingers crossed that Kildare could reach only their third All-Ireland semi-final in 60 years.

"This is a quarter-final and there is a statistic someone said to me recently that Kildare have only been in two semi-finals in the last 60 years or so, so it's a huge thing for us to advance, this is massive," he said.

"I came into the Kildare team in 1997, The first game was against Laois, I was a sub that day. Then there were the three games against Meath and then a Leinster and an All-Ireland in 1998 and another Leinster and an All-Ireland semi-final in 2000.

"I thought that was the way it was going to be every year. But 10 years later now, things change in football so much. Thankfully, we have a great bunch of players at the moment who want to do well and improve every year. That means quarter-final last year and hopefully a semi-final this year." Tweet

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