All Ireland SFC Qualifier Fermanagh v Donegal Underneath the stand in Clones, the players exit through a blue door made of iron. In dribs and drabs the Donegal boys traipse out.

Underneath the stand in Clones, the players exit through a blue door made of iron. In dribs and drabs the Donegal boys traipse out.

The last time Christy Toye was here, he had played a starring role in the downfall of the All-Ireland champions. Now he walks into a dank Saturday evening of spitting rain, the clouds low over Monaghan and his football season over.

"Right, lads, off yez go," says the steward and the door clanks shut behind him. By the time Charlie Mulgrew gets to the Donegal dressing-room, it is mostly empty but he walks around and shakes the hand of every player and mentor he can find.

Although Saturday marked his finest achievement in what has been a stunning debut season in management, the strain of having put his old county to the sword was writ large on Mulgrew's features.

He sought in vain for Brian McEniff, the boss of his own distant youth, but could not find him: the Donegal manager was already on the coach in the car park, a man spent. More than most, Mulgrew understood that if McEniff is to go, it should have been on a brighter note than this.

"It wasn't that strange until the very end when I realised we were going to win the game and that is when the emotion hit me," Mulgrew said.

"Thoughts of your club and your county come to the fore. Towards the end of the game it was very hard to make sense of it. In the Donegal dressing-room there all the heads are down and I know all those fellas from playing with them and I was a mentor when Declan Bonner was manager so it is very difficult.

"Anyway, you just have to say well done to both sides - it wasn't a great game but it was full of passion and excitement. We just hung in and hung in and hung in without playing particularly well. Donegal hit the crossbar and wee things went our way and we just dug it out."

Given the circumstances and resources the Letterkenny man had to work with, it does not seem an exaggeration to suggest Mulgrew is now a candidate for manager of the year.

Fiercely independent during his playing days, he was refreshingly grouchy and irritated when talking about the trials andDonegal tribulations of bring a team to the last eight of the championship. If Fermanagh win the All-Ireland, he will be positively seething.

"What I can't understand is the attention," he sighed. "One day you are walking about and there is no attention or nothing, then you win a game of football and all of a sudden the phones are going mad and it's TV this and papers that and . . . Jaysus, it was hard for our lads this week. It does affect preparation."

Across from the ground in the car park, the Donegal bus purred, but because of the usual traffic chaos in the Ulster town, it was going nowhere. The players mooched around in circles, like lost boys. As a departing image, it captured their summer pretty well.

"Indiscipline cost us that game," said a plainly weary and deeply hurt McEniff.

"Indiscipline off the field and indiscipline on it during it. We couldn't keep hold of the ball and we couldn't work it up the field the way we've been doing before.

"And we missed some close-in frees and ran up a load of wides. All credit to Fermanagh, and as an Ulsterman, I think it's great to see them do so well.

"I went up to Croke Park to see them play Cork last week and I'll go and watch them whoever they end up playing against next. So I wouldn't want to take anything away from them. They deserved to win.

"But for us, it's a game we'll regret losing."