Lisnaskea manager John Reihill knows his side will face their toughest test of the season on Sunday when they take on Cavan champions Arva in Clones for a place in the Ulster Club JFC final.

While the Emmetts edged out Donegal champions Na Rossa in the quarter final, Arva blew away the challenge of Ballymaguigan and Reihill acknowledges that their opponents will be red hot favourites to make it through to the final.

“There is no doubt that they will be favourites. They played in Division One in Cavan and from early on we knew of them and they were favourites even then for the Ulster Junior title so it is no surprise to us that they are there. We have watched them in the last round against Ballymaguigan, the Derry champions, and we were very impressed,” said Reihill.

And Reihill knows that there is plenty of quality in the Arva side, especially in their front eight.

“They have plenty of good players to watch out for, we were particularly impressed with their midfield of Brady and Hoffman who are very attack minded and have pace and get them on the front foot. They also have three or four excellent forwards. McCabe is well known in Cavan, I was also impressed with their corner forward Peter Morris and the other corner forward Conall Sheridan. Both McCabe and Sheridan came on against Ballymaguigan at half time, they were already comfortable enough at that stage but when those two boys came on they just pulled away. We know we will be up against it.”

However, he believes that his Lisnaskea side can take great confidence from that win over Na Rossa.

“The atmosphere and the buzz around the camp is good at the minute. As we said, it was a learning experience and it was a bonus for us to even have that game. Our target was to get out of Junior football in Fermanagh with anything else a bonus.

“To go on then and beat the Donegal champions, a more experienced team than we are and well managed with Declan Bonner over them, we were delighted to get over that one. I think the boys are confident enough but they know we will be up against it as well.”

The headlines from that game were all about the red cards shown to the Donegal side but Reihill says that within the Lisnaskea set up they know they performed well.

“We know how we performed on the day. Funnily, having watched it back I was more impressed with us than I was at the time. They had a purple patch were they scored 2-02 in about five or six minutes but apart from that they only scored three or four times and having been six points down at one stage to come back and win the game is fairly impressive from ourselves and it gives the boys great belief. We won the Fermanagh final playing good football and then in the Ulster Club we had to fight back and dog it out,” he added.

With the scoring threat that Arva possess, Reihill accepts that the Emmetts will have to be defensively minded.

“We will have to play reasonably defensive to stop their excellent midfield and forward line. They sometimes drop back themselves and then transition very fast so we will have to watch out for that. We also have to go for it but we will have to be patient at times because the likelihood is that they will have more ball and we will have to pick and choose our times when we can transition ourselves and commit but not commit too much because if we lose the ball they will punish us. I would envisage a defensive game from ourselves while I would expect them to go all out and would expect to beat us comfortably.”

And he feels that if Lisnaskea can perform they will give themselves a chance of progressing.

“The boys know Arva are a good side but we are a good side as well albeit an inexperienced team apart from a few lads.

“We are confident in ourselves that we can perform well enough but whether it is enough to beat a very strong opposition, we will have to wait and see,” he concluded.