Cian O'Neill was delighted with his Kildare team's reaction to their heavy defeat to Dublin as they swept aside Antrim to leave themselves two wins from a Super 8s return.
Kildare travelled to Corrigan Park and made light work of the Ulster side, winning 1-25 to 0-14, to become the first team in the Round 3 draw pot on Monday morning.
The Lilywhites manager credited his players with a fortnight of hard work as they bounced back from a chastening 15-point beating at the hands of the five-in-a-row chasing Dubs.
"The lads have put in an absolutely outstanding 12-13 days," O'Neill told RTE Radio 1's Saturday Sport. "You could see that all over the performance today.
"I thought everyone all over the pitch did a really fantastic job but it is the scores going over the bar that will be remembered," added O'Neill when asked about the 15-point contribution of corner-forwards Adam Tyrrell and Neil Flynn.
"It is great to see the lads turned around the disappointment of two weeks ago and put in a real workmanlike shift with a high level of execution."
O'Neill admitted that a Round 3 qualifier allows all eight teams to think about what may await in the new-look quarter-finals, but he was staying grounds - thinking about a difficult Leinster SFC campaign.
"Everyone going into the pot now on Monday morning will be thinking, 'hey we're still here. We have a great opp to progress'," said O'Neill.
"Even the three Leinster championship matches that we played before Dublin, we weren't performing, we were getting through but we weren't performing.
"Against Dublin, ironically we did a lot of better things but got punished badly because we didn't execute, so we have no right to look past the next match."
