A place in the Intermediate Football Championship final will be the prize for the winner on Saturday evening at Brewster Park as Devenish take on Derrylin in the last four of the competition.

It will be the second meeting of the sides in this year’s championship, having already met in the earlier round robin stages, and on that occasion Devenish finished up eight point victors in what was a one-sided affair in Garrison.

However, the beauty of the round robin is that teams have a chance to regroup and Derrylin have done that as they won their next three games and Devenish joint manager Marty O’Brien is expecting much sterner test this Saturday.

“We hadn’t played Derrylin in a number of years and now we’ll be playing five times in 12 months,” he said.

“I think we caught them on the hop a bit in Garrison and I’d be expecting a stiffer challenge this Saturday.

“They’ve come on a lot since the first day out and we’ve lost some key personnel so we’ll have to try to be ready and face up to the challenge that Derrylin will bring and maybe look to bring a little extra to the table ourselves if we want to get the win,” he commented.

The loss of the vastly experienced Barry Mulrone and midfielder Luke Robinson have been big blows for the Garrison outfit but they still have a lot of quality in their ranks.

Devenish will be looking for big performances from the likes of Thomas Treacy, JJ O’Brien, Fionan O’Brien, Jason Love, Terry O’Flanagan and Joe O’Brien to take them through to the decider.

Derrylin will know that a repeat of that performance in that first group game will see their championship hopes ended on Saturday.

And O’Connells manager Sean Donnelly feels that his side are coming up against the favourites for the title.

“We know that it is going to be tough, they are probably the favourites to win the whole thing and they gave us a good lesson that day in Garrison although we were poor too,” he said.

However, he believes that his side have reacted well to that loss in the first game.

“We have comeback well from it. We had a good second half against Belcoo, a good first half against Maguiresbridge and after the first 20 minutes against St. Pat’s last week we did well and hopefully we can build on that,” he added.

He knows though that it is going to take a big display to take them past Devenish and into the final.

“It is going to take a lot of hunger and intensity to beat them, we have to match what they bring.

“We need to up our game and we have to take more of our chances than we have been doing,” commented Donnelly.

Donnelly will be hoping that the likes of Danny Leonard, Luke Flanagan, James Dolan, Diarmuid Owens and Jake Smith can help them continue to build on their recent good form and get them over the line.