Immediately after Erne Gaels’ dramatic victory in last year’s Intermediate Championship Final, their Manager, Seamus Ryder, was not one for hiding the club’s ambitions.

As he stood on the pitch as players and fans celebrated, he said playing Senior Championship football and challenging for the New York Cup is where the club wanted to be.

“Probably people thought I was only after winning an Intermediate and I was getting ahead of myself – but that was the very first meeting,” he explained.

“We needed to win Intermediate and get back up, and we knew there were lads coming home; we had three or four coming out of the underage who we knew were decent players that were going to add to the squad.

“We just knew we were going to have a decent squad there and if we won the Intermediate we’d give it a good crack.

“That was the boys’ ambition straight from the first meeting – to get back up and get to a Senior Championship final, and give Derrygonnelly or Enniskillen a crack.

“It was always the aim.”

A good crack

And they have certainly given it a good crack this year and are on course for a league and Championship double.

Having bounced straight back up to the Senior grade last year after a disappointing 2020, a win on Sunday would cement the faith the players and management had in themselves.

To get here, they had to rely on a last-gasp penalty from Shane Rooney in the semi-final against Kinawley, and Ryder knows there will need to be an improvement to the performance if Belleek are to overcome Enniskillen.

“Our performance wasn’t good enough. Conditions weren’t great, and I suppose that was ourselves and Kinawley’s fourth meeting, so when you know a team well, players know each other well, and it’s just cancelling each other out, but we came out on the right side of it – that was the main thing.

“We always say we train for them last five minutes of a game. It is going to be there for both teams, and it’s just about getting that last chance.

“You saw there, [full back] Paul Ward was up there. We’d encourage that. He was in the square, he got the last touch before Dan [McCann] caught it.

“At that stage, we’d encourage every man is a forward, every man is a defender, and it worked out well for us.”

It did work out well but there was some controversy in the lead-up to the penalty decision on whether the ball hit the referee, Barry Monaghan.

Ryder though backed the referee for the calls he made: “If Barry Monaghan says he was trying to get out of the way and he didn’t touch it, I take Barry Monaghan’s word for it.”

Looking forwards

But that is all in the past and Ryder says he and his side are only looking forwards.

“We know we are playing Enniskillen. We have to concentrate on playing Enniskillen.

“We are worried about getting a performance in, getting our match-ups right for Enniskillen.

“That’s all we are concentrating on now – we are looking forward, not backwards,” he stated.

Previous games have seen plenty of open football and Ryder is expecting something similar, with both teams liking to attack.

“It will be 100mph stuff. There will be some great battles out round the middle and inside [between] full backs and full forwards.”

And Ryder knows the danger Enniskillen carry, going forward.

“You saw it against Derrygonnelly – they had eight or nine different scorers. Josh Horan got 1-01, Brandon [Horan] two points, and Eoin Beacom a couple of points.

‘Quality all over’

“I thought Derrygonnelly took Conor Love out of the game pretty well after the first 10 minutes, but the rest of the boys stepped up for them. There is quality all over.”

Erne Gaels last played in the Senior decider in 2016, losing out to Derrygonnelly by a single point. Ryder played that day, as did several others still involved.

But the Belleek boss will consider more recent final experiences as they prepare for this weekend’s decider.

“I think we had a Championship final last year against Garrison and whether that is Senior or Intermediate, if you are playing a team up the road, the thought of losing to them is painful.

“So I think we’ll draw on last year more than six years ago.

“We came out on the right side of it last year and even that league final against Kinawley was treated as a Championship final.

“We will draw on our own experiences in the past 12 months; hopefully, that should help us.”

And what about some more last-gasp winners for his side?

“I won’t care how we win if we win. I don’t care how it comes about.

“If we have the New York Cup going down to Belleek, I’ll not care how it’s done.”