Amid the euphoria of Saturday night’s penalty shoot-out victory over Gowna, the realisation dawned on Enniskillen Gaels manager Simon Bradley that he’ll be without one of his key players for the upcoming Ulster Club SFC semi-final.
The following afternoon came confirmation that All-Ireland champions Kilcoo will be the opposition for that last four clash after the Magpie claimed a facile win over Ballybay in Clones on Sunday.
Callum Jones was red carded in Brewster Park on Saturday night along with Gowna’s Conor Madden.
Read more: Enniskillen Gaels v Gowna RECAP as Fermanagh champions win after shoot-out drama
However, rather than immediately state their intention to appeal Niall McKenna’s decision, Bradley insists they’ll study the video evidence to see if an appeal is merited.
“I had a fairly good view of the incident and Callum (Jones) went in for a tackle and the Gowna man maybe slipped a little bit,” said Bradley.
“It looked like Callum made contact with his head so you can understand the decision. To be fair, the referee (Niall McKenna) and the linesmen did a good job on a difficult pitch.
“An Ulster Club game is alway going to get feisty at some point.
“We’ll have a look at it again to see if it is worth appealing, but if it was a fair red card then we won’t.”
Jones had already plundered 1-2 from play and might have been one of the penalty-takers for Enniskillen had he still been on the pitch at the end of extra-time.
Despite leading for the majority of the contest, the home side needed a stunning free from Eoin Beacom to force extra-time.
The Fermanagh champions then had to battle back after Gowna led by three in the first period of extra-time to bring the game to penalties.
All five of their penalties were successfully converted with Conor Love, Conor Watson, Eoin Beacom, John Reihill and Ciaran Smith finding the net while Cian Newman saved Gowna’s first penalty from Cian Madden.
“Penalties are a lottery, but we have practised them in training,” stated Bradley.
“We made a substitution to bring Conor Watson back in and bring Ciaran Smith on. Those boys are great penalty takers and they all play soccer for Enniskillen Town or Enniskillen Rangers and Athletic.
“We’d seven players in mind for the penalties and the five that took them were as cool as you like.
“That was the classic roller coaster! We’d a good start to the game, we were in front and we then conceded two bad goals.
“Gowna controlled the game for a period, but I thought our boys showed great character in the second half and again in extra-time. They done themselves proud.
“Maybe when we went three-points down in extra-time, it freed us up a bit and we started going for things a bit more.
“We didn’t play overly well, but we did enough to keep in the game and we got a couple of lucky breaks and we took advantage of that.”
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