Donegal will be eager to atone for freak fall

All-Ireland SFC Qualifiers Round Four/Donegal v Fermanagh: The game nobody wanted. One way for Fermanagh to come down from cloud nine was to merely think of a game against their neighbours in good old Clones. It seems like scant reward for their heroics in Croke Park last weekend. For Donegal, too, this is an uncomfortable assignment.

Fermanagh represent the nadir of the latest McEniff era and he could probably have done without encountering the team again so soon after the demoralising Ulster final loss to Armagh. To complicate matters, he is coming up against one of his former old boys, Charlie Mulgrew, a member of the class of 1992.

What Mulgrew has achieved with Fermanagh must already make him a genuine candidate for manager of the year. To come into a county stripped of resources, of most of its team, and of morale, and to fashion a really attractive football side now challenging for a place in the quarter-finals is a truly fantastic achievement. There may, as he said himself, be "no rocket science in it", but he has tapped into something that has eluded many counties with less modest laboratories.

Clones will be sleepy and strange for this afternoon's game but what both counties must keep in mind is the extent of the prize at stake: a place in what is shaping up to be a really open quarter-final series.

Donegal's disappointment and subsequent misdemeanours have been well publicised but more pressing now is the fitness of Damien Diver and Christy Toye. Both men would constitute significant losses.

Two weeks on from the Armagh debacle, Donegal should be eager to prove that what happened in Croke Park was a freak. They will not make as many errors and will not be meeting with the physical force they encountered a fortnight ago. Kevin Cassidy's return will be timely.

Fermanagh are young and fearless, as exemplified by James Sherry and Mark Little against Cork. Stephen Maguire is an old-fashioned, reliable full forward who will win his share of ball and scores and throughout the field, they are comfortable on the ball.

It makes for an open, attractive game - both teams owe the world after the grim drudgery of their meeting last summer. We must assume that Donegal still have the stomach to fight and that being the case, they have enough experience and talent to call a halt to Fermanagh's noble summer.