Four Masters will face a strenuous battle tomorrow night when they travel to Glenswilly in the quarter-final of the Championship.
Kevin Lyons, the Four Masters manager, revealed that he’ll be without his full-strength squad ahead of the game but he insisted his team will try and make a good account of themselves despite the tough draw.
“Listen, it’s Glenswilly, it is going to be very tough, it always is, whether it’s a top-class team taking them on or a team that is on the build like ourselves it is a big ask.
“We don’t have the full compliment either, so it is going to be an even bigger ask, but we’ll give it a good rattle and we have got this far now on merit as such, and we are going to try and make that count.
“No matter what team play Glenswilly, all of them are going to have to give them the respect they deserve, especially with the kind of players they have,” Lyons said.
“You have to set-up likewise and take the game to them as much as you can but they’ll not take Four Masters lightly either and they’ll do their homework.”
The Division 2 side cut a 14 point first half deficit against Termon last week to reach the last eight by the skin of their teeth and Lyons admitted they must learn from those previous mistakes.
“There were huge questions asked of our players at half-time last week against Termon, it wasn’t an easy dressing room to go into because a lot of things that we had planned for didn’t come to fruition.
“Termon just came tearing at us and they gave us a lesson in football in that first-half and our boys were waiting for something to happen rather than making something happen.
“We have got to go out and perform and I believe we have learnt a valuable lesson from that first-half performance.
The Four Masters manager conceded if his outfit repeats their antics of last week defensively then Glenswilly could run riot straight into the semi-finals.
“Absolutely, if there is a team that can punish you from your mistakes it s Glenswilly,” he added.
“You look at the top teams and if you make mistakes as we have in Division two all year you tend not to be punished too heavily, but when you come up against the big guns you can’t make silly errors because they tend to punish you most of the time.”
Lyons acknowledged that Masters are heavily viewed as the underdogs in the quarter-final affair and is being ‘realistic’ going into tomorrow evenings match.
“We are under no illusions about the challenges that lie ahead and we’re being realistic about the Championship, as I’ve said already, Glenswilly is a top team and they tend to come good at the knockout stages.
“All we can do is prepare for the game tomorrow and the boys are looking forward to it. They didn’t think they would be in this position and the players deserve the credit for that.”
