Kilcar ready to ‘close the gates and focus on ourselves’ - Conor Cunningham

For now, Conor Cunningham is quite content for Kilcar to be written off.

Kilcar are through to the Donegal SFC quarter-finals having finished in the top four following the group stage.

Kilcar drew 0-14 apiece with Sean MacCumhaills on Saturday evening, Oisin Gallen’s last-gasp free levelling things.

With a three-week break until they go to the quarter-finals, Cunningham and company will get down to some hard work in Towney.

“We’ll close the gates for the next couple of weeks and just focus on ourselves,” Cunningham told Donegal Live.

Late Oisin Gallen point earns Sean MacCumhaills draw with Kilcar

MacCumhaills, with Gallen scoring nine points, led for long periods on an evening where the teams were level nine times in all, but Kilcar advance straight to the quarter-finals after a draw in Ballybofey

“We’ve had four tough games and we’re motoring away. People are writing us off. We don’t know who we’ll be playing yet so it makes the next two weeks of training very easy.”

Kilcar will hope to add Mark McHugh and Eoin McHugh to their ranks when they line up in the last eight.

“It will be a tight enough squeeze, but he won’t be far away,” Cunningham said of Mark McHugh, while cousin Eoin ‘will be fit enough’. There is a worry over Matthew McClean, who had to be withdrawn on Saturday with a hand injury that will need further assessment.

It was only in the 59th minute that Patrick McBrearty - with his eighth point of the game - put Kilcar ahead for the first time in Ballybofey.

However, Kilcar had to settle for a draw as Gallen pointed with the game’s final act.

Cunningham said: “The initial feeling is disappointment. We took a one-point lead into injury time there. We did well and showed a lot of resilience to come back from four points down.

“We worked so hard to get back into it. It was just game management in those last 30 seconds. We should have just wound down the clock, but we got turned over and gave Oisin Gallen a chance.

“There was a great battle between him and Brian O’Donnell. When Gallen got a sniff, you could nearly guarantee that he’d put it over.”

MacCumhaills led 0-8 to 0-6 at half-time with Kilcar somewhat frustrated at that juncture.

Cunningham said: “We knew that we needed to get pressure on the middle eight. MacCumhaills have great forwards and if you give them time around the middle they’ll get nice ball into Gallen. We were too stand-offish for a while, but we worked on that in the second half.”