Game had gone from us admits Mohill manager Eamonn O’Hara

One thing you can be guaranteed when talking to Eamonn O’Hara is that he doesn’t shy away from tough conversations and the Mohill manager wasn’t afraid to admit that he thought the Connacht Gold SFC title had gone away from his team before Matthew Murphy’s dramatic equaliser.

In a game where O’Hara was left ruing some poor finishing, particularly in the first half of the 0-14 to 1-11 draw, Mohill got out of jail their manager felt: “Oh yeah, it was gone from us, it has gone from us -  we had it. But the way the lads just stuck at it, responded really well from going one ahead, game level, they went ahead.

“Then it just came down to that last one. That last one was more of a fluke than anything else,” admitted Eamonn, “Domhnaill kicked a class one against Fenagh but it was just fading away but credit the lads for going and contesting the ball with Maxwell. It fell into Evan Harkins' hands and quick hands and Matt, he just popped it over - I'll call it an inspirational substitute, but it was just potluck.”

O’Hara was quick to attribute it to the character inherent in his squad: “Character is a funny thing when you have it in a group and you have to have massive character to be coming back to five county finals in a row, albeit you get kicked and lose with them and then you get kicked and you win one.

“It's always a balancing act but we knew it was always going to be a challenge coming down here to Ballinamore. People are saying their home patch but it made no difference to us, we were going to play it, but it was just one of those ones where I just thought we had it, I think we should have kicked on when we got the point ahead. But we didn't and credit to them, they came back and we were lucky then to get that equaliser.”

REACTION: NOTHING BETWEEN THE TEAMS SAYS SHANE QUINN

Eamonn revealed that if his team was going to concede a goal, doing so as early as did was probably the best of a bad situation: “I think the reaction from the lads after the goal, I thought we played awfully well in the first half, showed great character. It is probably the best time to concede a goal, truth be told. It wasn't pretty, but it was one of those ones where it woke us up and we played really, really good football.”

Both teams have six days to recover ahead of next Saturday’s replay and Eamonn feels it is the team who learns their lessons from the drawn game who will triumph: “I think the six day turnaround, it's going to be as heavy for them as it's going to be for us, it's about how can we fix the mistakes that we've made.

“We could concede a bad goal again the next day - county finals are like that, it's a war of attrition but there is character in the group, I have to say there's a willingness and a want here but it's not always going to get you across the line, you need that little bit of quality.”

Yet even with quality you have to show character as O’Hara referenced the lead up to their late equaliser: “At the very, very end, that shot that Donnie took was kind of a rushed shot. He was right to take it, he was right to take it.“Donie has been exceptional for us all year and credit to him, it didn't go over but there was a contest inside and I kept saying that whatever type of dirty ball goes in there, let's just create a little bit of chaos and see what happens. We got the goal chance from it and we got that chance from it and it's something we might look at next week.”