St Patricks manager Fergal Reel accepts that St Patricks will have to improve if they're to compete with holders Newtown Blues in their SFC semi-final.

The big two will collide for a place in the Joe Ward Cup decider during the first weekend of September and Reel expects his charges to move on from their unconvincing quarter-final victory over Mattock:

"That wouldn't be good enough for the Blues," the Armagh man told The Drogheda Independent following the Lordship men's 2-11 to 0-9 success last weekend. "They're champions and rightly so and they're coming good at this time.

"That performance wouldn't even be close to them. We'll have to look at it but we can only improve.

"When you're there you can improve and when you're out you can't, so we'll take the positives from that.

"We got a reality check against Dreadnots as well and the gap between games has maybe diluted that a bit.

"It's hard to put your finger on why we were so poor in the second half. We thought we had everything set up right to deal with the second half."

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