Even though they were leading by two points with a big breeze in the concluding stages of this turgid affair, Kinawley boss Dom Corrigan was happy enough to come away with a point against neighbours Belnaleck.

“A draw was a fair enough result in the end and Belnaleck have a lot of quality players and I was not disappointed that we did not hold on to that late two-point lead.

“Obviously we would have loved to have come out of it with the two points but over the course of the hour and five minutes I thought that neither side deserved to lose.

“Both defences were well on top throughout and scores were at a premium.

“We played against the wind in the opening half, and we held out well and Belnaleck only went in front from two pointed frees from Darragh McGurn in injury time and he had a great tussle with our own Paul Breen, and I think they about cancelled each other out."

Corrigan is reporting no injuries ahead of this weekend’s crunch south Fermanagh derby with Teemore who gave championship favourites Enniskillen Gaels quite a fright in Brewster Park.

“We have to get ready for Teemore and I saw them against Enniskillen and I was very impressed and they will be disappointed that they did not get a result against the Gaels.

“So, this will be a real championship battle on Saturday evening in Teemore.

“This is our second derby, and it is a mini south Fermanagh battle with ourselves, Belnaleck and Teemore.”

Kinawley went very close to toppling last year’s county champions Derrygonnelly Harps in the county semi-final and had a big lead but were overhauled in the home straight.

But pragmatic Corrigan does not indulge in what ifs.

“Yes indeed, but last year is last year and we can’t do anything about it as our whole focus now is on Teemore and they will be very keen to get points after last week’s close shave with Enniskillen Gaels.

“We are looking forward to the challenge and we know we need to improve.”

Belnaleck boss Daniel Kille hailed the character of his charges who came back from a 0-08 to 0-06 deficit to grab a draw against Kinawley in a torrid derby affair in Kinawley.

Kille said that “in general he was glad to get a draw".

“For the past two years we failed to get any points out of our first two games so to come away with a point is huge and could yet be huge in the context of the group.

“We had the wind in the first half but I felt we rushed our attacks rather than being measured with them and we felt because we had that strong breeze we had to go after scores much quicker than we needed to.

“It came against us but it was a tricky wind.”

He added: “We had about five or six wides in the first half and we were 0-03 to 0-01 at the break.

“We put a focus on containing Kinawley in the first 10 minutes of the second half and we did that reasonably well but then they pulled away at 0-06 to 0-04.

“It took massive character from our boys to come back and many a team would have just given in but we kept calm and came back and got the draw.

“But we had also lost Bryan Owens and Garvan Quigley so to come back from that situation was quite a feat.”