In his first year managing Down Paddy O'Rourke, the 1991 All-Ireland winning captain, has steered them to an Ulster final. After the defeat of Fermanagh his view of the match narrative is uncluttered by any admission of self-doubt.

"Before and after half time they had us on the back foot. They were winning the breaking ball around the middle of the field but I always knew we would get back into the game again and when we did we took our chances.

"At times we played poorly and at times we played well but I think we showed a lot of character and belief in ourselves."

Down played the final half hour with only 14 men. Given the statistics on coping with that deficiency O'Rourke was predictably unfazed.

"I wasn't that particularly worried. Teams have gone down to 14 before and still won the games. We just had to get re-organised.

"It's difficult to get re-organised here at Clones because it's very hard to get messages to players. The extra space probably contributed to us getting the extra scores that won the game."

Among the scores that won the game was a crucial first-half penalty. Greg McCartan, playing in his first championship match since the county's defeat by Antrim three years ago, on a day that he missed a penalty, outlined how, despite that precedent, he had pulled rank on the other prospective kickers.

"There's three of us there to hit them, myself, Liam Doyle and Benny Coulter. As I was walking towards it the two of them were looking at me. I have number one choice and I went ahead and hit it. He went the right way but as long as it's in I don't care.

"This team's going to be hard to beat. We mightn't win very much but we're going to be hard to beat."

James McCartan and Mickey Linden, team-mates of the manager in 1991, both came on to good effect. McCartan got the second goal and Linden brought some experience to bear on the closing minutes.

The same experience he demonstrated afterwards in talking up Down's final opposition.

Twenty-one years of championship make you a smooth talker on the merits of upcoming opponents.

Linden admitted: "Tyrone are a fantastic team. I'm not bumping them up or anything. We all know how good they are, they've probably got the best two corner forwards in the country so they're going to be very hard to beat."

Fermanagh have their own hardship, a qualifier with Cavan next weekend. Manager Dominic Corrigan has the despairing demeanour of someone who's cracked his head off the glass ceiling once too often.

"We started well, faded away, had a bad second quarter, played very well in the third quarter and climbed back up from being six points behind to lead by one. At that stage we had four scoreable opportunities and took none of them. Then they got the goal and that left them fit to regroup and take the initiative to go on and win.

"The boys are very disappointed in there. We set ourselves the target of reaching the Ulster final this year. They're shattered, probably know they didn't do themselves justice."