DRAWING BOARD time again, and not just for the losers in this Ulster Championship first round replay. Martin McHugh was under no illusions about either his side's display or their chances next weekend when they take on Donegal.

"We'll need to play an awful lot better even to give Donegal a game, never mind beat them," said the Cavan manager afterwards. "But we know what we have to do and we have a week to work on our game between this and the Donegal match."

There were, he admitted problems in most of the areas of the pitch but the team had been saved by a handful "of fine individual performances" which would not be enough to see them through against opposition of higher quality.

"It's a pity that the game is next week because it's tough on the lads to play three weeks in a row but they know that's what they have to do if they want to get any further and so there'll be no complaints."

Outside the Fermanagh dressing room there are no complaints either, just a sense of disappointment as Pat King reflected on what might have been. While there were no tharsh words for referee Jim Curran over his decision to send Sean Breen off there was certainly a feeling that the decision had had a decisive impact on the proceedings.

"That was a terrible blow for a team like us. It's one thing for an experienced Division One outfit to adjust to something like that but we had a lot of young inexperienced players out there and I definitely don't think we would have faded like that in the last 10 minutes if we had the full 15 out on the field."

The feeling that it could so easily have all been so different clearly crested heavily on King's shoulders as he reflected that "we studied the video of last week's game very closely and we saw how inept we were. We came into this game knowing how much better we could play band we really thought we could beat that Cavan team.

"We've come a long way over the blast 10 months, though, and I'm sure we go as far over the next 10 so we'll take a bit of a break now and start working towards next year's championship in September.