LAST year’s Senior Championship finalists meet one stage earlier this year and for Erne Gaels, it will hopefully be a better outcome than in 2022.

The Belleek outfit were outclassed by Enniskillen Gaels in the decider.

But if they are going to revenge that defeat, the influential Ryan Lyons knows they will need to improve on their quarter-final performance against Ederney.

“We are going to need an improvement,” said Lyons.

“The game was stop-start so we never got a flow to it, never built up any momentum.

“There was probably a bit of naivety on our behalf as well when we had two extra men for periods of time.”

He knows against the reigning champions this will not be good enough, as last year starkly showed: “They were much better than us on the day.

“We didn’t do ourselves justice as well.

“This weekend I suppose is a chance to try and put that to bed and get our own performance right first and foremost.”

There is no motivation needed according to Lyons but if Erne Gaels can take learnings from the last couple of games in the championship he knows they will be in strong contention.

“We have got to prioritise ourselves and just make sure we get our performance on the money.

“No matter what way Enniskillen play, if we don’t get what we can out of ourselves we are going to be in trouble.”

Slow starts against Derrygonnelly and Ederney this year, and in the final last year will need to be addressed as well as being more clinical and better game management among the areas Lyons identified.

“I don’t think anything drastic needs to improve, just small increments across the board.

“Not being as naïve in our play especially going forward and being a bit more clinical.

“They have unreal talent going forward as well and like all good teams they’ll punish any kind of poor execution or turnover.

“Any kind of inch you give them they’ll take a mile so you’ve got to control the game as much as possible.”

It is what is needed if Erne Gaels are going to contest a second consecutive Senior Championship final.

“Realistically Enniskillen along with Derrygonnelly are the benchmark in the last year or two.

“So we are going to need a huge performance to get over the line,” said Lyons before adding: “I’m confident we can deliver it.”