Enniskillen Gaels Captain Richard O’Callaghan was delighted with the character shown by the side as they eventually overcame Cavan champions Gowna at Brewster Park on Saturday night.

The Gaels required late scores in both normal time and extra time to keep their hopes of progressing alive and they then produced five wonderful penalties to set up a meeting with Kilcoo in the semi-final.

“It was great to get the win. You look back and you think you could have done this and that, and won it in normal time, but it is this group’s first time out in Ulster so to get over the line in any way was brilliant.

“I think to be able to come back first of all in normal time and then again in extra time – I said to the boys even before the penalties were taken about how much character had been shown to that point, and no matter what else happened we did well to get the game to that point,” he said.

O’Callaghan acknowledged that playing in Ulster was a new experience and he feels that they will learn from this game heading into the semi-final.

“The biggest thing is – and I would say it is the same for every team – is coming out into the unknown.

“You don’t know what you are coming up against; you can watch videos and get all the information you want but it is completely different from playing the same teams in the league and then going into the Championship against them.

“I think we learnt on the ball very well, particularly in extra time and we were able to make calls ourselves out on the pitch. We will definitely take a lot from it and learn from it to take into the next game,” he stated.

Next up for the Gaels is the small matter of a meeting with the All-Ireland champions Kilcoo, and O’Callaghan says that it is a challenge that they will look to embrace.

“They are All-Ireland champions and they are that for a reason.

“They are extremely well organised, they have a great system of play and everyone knows their role in terms of what they are about.

“This though is where we want to be, and you want to test yourself against the best. It is the challenge that you want and we aim to embrace the challenge the same way we embraced the challenge against Gowna.

“Look, this game is going to represent different challenges for the playing group, and different challenges we will have to respond to on the day, the same as we did against Gowna.

“But that is the attraction of this competition – it throws up those unpredictable elements because teams haven’t played each other and, hopefully, that will come to the fore on Saturday week,” said the Enniskillen Captain.