FOOTBALL: Keith Duggan on Fermanagh's defeat of Armagh, and a feeling rarely experienced in sport

The moment of moments in the football season lay in those delicious and unforgettable couple of minutes when Fermanagh stood where nobody in the world felt they had a right to, deadlocked with Armagh in the last minutes of a high-summer game in Croke Park. A place in the All-Ireland semi-final awaited the victors. And all reason led us to believe that Armagh, the ultimate predators, would prevail, inviting their opponents forward, coaxing and nudging them towards a small, innocuous mistake which they would swiftly translate into a killer score.

But watching Fermanagh out there that day gave you a feeling that you rarely experience in sport. They were playing with a divine sense of belief and liberation that must have been as disconcerting for the Armagh boys to deal with as it was for the rest of us to watch. (Because Armagh-Fermanagh on that Saturday afternoon was the still point of the turning world).

The famous basketball player Michael Jordan always said he never feared taking those nerveless, last-second shots to win a game over the decades because he knew only two things could happen: the ball would go in or it would not.

When it mattered, Fermanagh had managed to distil their season to a manifestation of this elemental lack of care.

Somehow Charlie Mulgrew had achieved the toughest managerial feat. He convinced his team that winning should be the natural conclusion to any day they walked onto a football field.

Although they reflected this most spectacularly against Armagh, it had its origins much earlier in the season. Mulgrew inherited a county team in perhaps the most unpromising set of circumstances in the land. Shorn of half its key members, bereft of belief and having been taught by Tyrone in a gruelling game in Croke Park that ambition only takes you so far, Fermanagh were considered a spent force. And there was no sugar daddy waiting in the wings.

Mulgrew gathered a bunch of youngsters from all around the county and told them in blunt terms that he could promise them nothing but hard work. It is said he warned them that if they wanted any frills, anything cushioned, they should walk now. In return, he gave players an honest chance.

All through the league, the Sunday evening radio reports briefly skimmed over Fermanagh loss after Fermanagh loss. But the scorelines did not indicate the lopsided brush-offs that might have been expected. In getting squeezed from Division One, Fermanagh made opponents earn whatever they got. Even in the mud of early spring, they had tapped into the kind of fight that would serve them so well later in the year. In the league, they were unlucky. But they plummeted.

As always in sport, there had to be a rebound. It is hard to say when, precisely, Fermanagh's season turned. Was it in the brave championship opener against Tyrone - another game that they lost, this by four points? Or maybe it lay in the sad decision by the footballers of Tipperary to abandon their season just before their scheduled qualifying game with Fermanagh. You wonder if the Tipperary boys contemplated their decision to pass on that game as they observed what Fermanagh would become and realised that no matter how bad it gets, you should always play.

Fermanagh had learned that in the bleak days when they kept running because Mulgrew ordered them to. By the time they had reached the point where they lorded it over Cork on a fine day in Croke Park, they were portrayed as a fairytale story. But, of course, they were anything but.

One of the forgotten days of the championship came a week after Fermanagh ushered Cork out of Croke Park. They drew Donegal in the next round on a dark Saturday in Clones, a game that was not televised. If it was fairytale, it was Brothers Grimm. Donegal went three points up and then hit the crossbar in the first six minutes.

Fermanagh, though, clung grimly through that storm and then happily got sucked into the vortex of a bleak contest against their neighbours that was finally decided after a surreally poor period of extra-time. It was a brave and stubborn win, payback for all the tough league losses they had absorbed, in wholly unglamorous surroundings.

Afterwards, Mulgrew, a reluctant interviewee at the best of times, was clearly torn after bettering his native county and long-time mentor, Brian McEniff.

Mulgrew just wanted out of the market town and on to the next round, business as usual. (It was notable that all the Fermanagh players never referred to games in grandiose terms like All-Ireland quarter- final: it was just another round).

Against the rippling orange splendour of Armagh, Fermanagh seemed to come within a hare's breath of disaster again, quickly yielding five points to the Ulster champions. But they stayed with it, they persisted, they believed and eventually confused Armagh with their frantic, overlapping running game and quality defending. Armagh lost sight of what they were as Fermanagh distracted them and lured them into a fascinating and unbelievable endgame.

Afterwards, the air was full of platitudes about how Fermanagh had shown the way, that other teams of modest resources would believe they too could topple the contemporary giants. But nothing was further from the truth. The marvellous thing about that day was that it somehow gave itself up to fantasy.

Kerry will win All-Ireland finals again and Matt Forde will, God willing, put in rhapsodic turns on football fields again next summer. And Fermanagh, organised and young and brimming with confidence now, might well build on last year. But there are no guarantees and their first day out this summer is, of course, against Armagh.

When it counted in 2004, though, they had the verve and belief to better the All-Ireland favourites in the last minutes of a classic tussle. They believed in themselves all afternoon. Tom Brewster seemed to saunter down the left field at the end before kicking that final point. It was only as that ball went floating that the rest of us fully understood that Fermanagh were bold and honest and, in a small way, mad enough to knock Armagh out of the All-Ireland football championship. But they did it. And no matter what, they will be remembered for it.