O'Rourke's men show they learned lessons of the league

MALACHY O'ROURKE wore the contented demeanour of a man for whom most things had gone to plan. His Fermanagh team had energetically defused opponents who had arrived packed tight with regrets about last year's All-Ireland quarter-final defeat by Kerry and determined to use the angst as fuel for a strong season.

"The boys have worked very hard all year," he said. "We came here expecting to put in a big performance. We were going into the unknown a wee bit given that Monaghan were one of the top teams in the country last year. We had done well in Division Three but didn't know what it would be like coming up against a team like Monaghan."

Fermanagh's NFL campaign had comfortably delivered promotion but was deprived of the decoration of the Division Three title because of the concession of three goals in the final. According to O'Rourke, the team had treated the experience as a useful diagnostic.

"I thought our defence was strong all through," he said. "They didn't give away many frees, which was a big thing because we knew they had two very good free-takers. The last day against Wexford we conceded three bad goals, so we worked on that and our defence was probably a lot tighter."

While Fermanagh move on to the Ulster semi-final, Monaghan had been emptied by the setback, which side-tracks them into the qualifiers in all of eight weeks.

Manager Séamus McEnaney emerged to talk to the media, waiting until all interested parties had gathered respectfully around - "to get the pain over with", as he put it.

"I'm very disappointed. We seemed to lack intensity and conceded two very bad goals, which was probably the difference in the end. In fairness, we weren't at the races for long periods today and Fermanagh could have beaten us by more.

"Absolutely no way did we underestimate them. The question was: would we be able to hang on in the battle for 68-70 minutes? Unfortunately we were too far away with 68 minutes gone.

"We felt we were really motivated coming into this game. Now, I know that doesn't explain what we've seen in the last 75 minutes, but lads, listen, the bottom line is these lads have given up the last five or six months of their lives for today's game and that's wild disappointing for everyone.

"That part of it is down the drain for us. We would like to be preparing for the high road, but we have to prepare now for the low road and battle our way back into it."

They had coped with the unwelcome distraction of All Star forward Tommy Freeman injuring himself at work during the week.

"Yes, there was a danger that Tommy wouldn't play," said the manager. "He was completely out of contention on Thursday. He got a nail straight through his hand on Thursday and it wasn't taken out until Friday evening. He spent two nights in hospital, but anything that came into him today I thought he did quite well. That didn't affect our performance."

And the old standard in these days of the back door: will it be hard to lift them for the qualifiers?

"The next four or five days will tell a lot, but these lads aren't going to walk away from it easy."