ULSTER SFC FERMANAGH v DOWN:KEITH DUGGAN remembers Fermanagh's glorious summer of 2004 when they went so close to reaching an All-Ireland final

lN THE end, they won nothing, but that hardly mattered. What Fermanagh did in the summer of 2004 tested the laws of possibility in the All-Ireland football championship and in a manner that seemed to fall somewhere between fantasy and reality.

They came within a single score of appearing in an All-Ireland final without ever having been crowned Ulster champions which, given their frustrations down the decades in that local tournament, would have been perfectly just.

Nobody saw it coming and they behaved in a way that has set the tone for all teams intent on crashing through the class system that exists in Gaelic games.

And it was no fluke: this was no 80 to 1 outsider puffing its way to the line after the favourites had become tangled up at Bechers. Fermanagh belonged in the best of company that year. The bare facts of their championship journey are worth recounting. As expected, they exited the Ulster championship courtesy of All-Ireland champions Tyrone.

If there was any warning of what was to follow to be taken from that game, it may have been in the score.

The anticipated walloping never happened – Fermanagh lost by four points and the margin flattered the Red Hand.

And that was where they departed from standard form.

First came a surreal qualifying victory, when they were handed a walkover win against Tipperary. Then they ground out an extra-time win against Meath that, although declared by those present to be a classic, was largely overlooked.

Their reward was a trip to Croke Park and now, in front of a national audience, they ran merry against a Cork team well used to playing in the cathedral. It was Fermanagh’s first ever victory in the place.

Next up was Donegal, who had just lost an Ulster final. Back to Clones, on an overcast, uneasy Saturday afternoon. That too went to extra-time and Fermanagh prevailed and now they were in an All-Ireland quarter-final. Armagh awaited them. In becoming Ulster champions, Armagh had eviscerated Donegal in the provincial final. All-Ireland champions in 2002, narrowly beaten in the final of 2003, the aura of invincibility that Joe Kernan’s squad had developed was at its highest.

On that afternoon, they were, without question, the strongest football squad in the game. They were expected to chew Fermanagh up. Instead, on an unforgettable Saturday afternoon, Fermanagh played as if they did not know who and what they were facing.

They played it light and fast and fearlessly. It was like watching a lightweight dancing around a pedigree heavyweight champion and picking him off with guerrilla attacks and well-placed jabs. You had to rub your eyes as you watched it. When it was finished, hundreds in Croke Park were rubbing their eyes. The final score was 0-12 to 0-11 and Fermanagh were in an All-Ireland semi-final.

The story would end there, eventually – they lost to Mayo after a replay and they had a right to feel aggrieved that they weren’t there in September. They came close enough to touch an All-Ireland final, something that no Fermanagh team had done in a century.

“We have probably produced our best crop of players ever,” says Peter McGinnitty, the classy Fermanagh veteran of 1982 who is now responsible for games development in the county.

“These boys have propelled us there. And the thing is, they have continued to do that – not as spectacularly as in 2004 but they have done. Locally, people feel we have the material to be at the quarter-final stage on a given year now.

“Okay, last year we missed out after meeting Kildare following a disappointing Ulster final result. But that is where we are. And that is a fantastic achievement. But this team is held in huge regard.

“For instance, Raymie Johnson, whom I’m related to, played throughout that era, but won’t be playing this year. He was badly injured in a club game. And the number of people inquiring and sending in best wishes has been remarkable. They are held in very high esteem.”

Five years ago, the outlook for Fermanagh was bleak. True, they had enjoyed a promising season the year before. Dominic Corrigan, whose coaching skills at St Michael’s, Enniskillen, has influenced most of the county’s best footballers, had made remarkable progress.

In April 2003, they made it to the league semi-finals in Croke Park, where Tyrone awaited them – a fate that Seán Moran memorably compared to “a bit like a child going on holidays to Disneyland only to find the schoolyard bully already there.”

In the summer they had an Ulster championship win against Donegal and later beat Meath in the qualifiers – a match that Corrigan praised as Fermanagh’s best ever championship performance.

Another win, against Mayo in torrential July rain in Sligo, brought them into the quarter-finals. Again, Tyrone were waiting. The 19 points blitzing they received took the shine off their summer.

In November, Corrigan quit the post in pre-season, frustrated that his ambitions were not matched by those of the executive. Several of Fermanagh’s most experienced players left with him. What had been a highly promising summer had suddenly deteriorated into a desperate situation.

There was widespread surprise when the announcement came that the job had been filled by Charlie Mulgrew, well known as an evergreen servant of Donegal football but less so as a manager. The easy consensus was that the Donegal man had inherited a demoralised squad in a fragile county and their subsequent relegation in the league seemed to bear that out.

It could be argued that Mulgrew never fully got the plaudits for what he achieved in 2004, that his leadership through that summer was deserved of a manager of the year award. Afterwards, it was said that in his introduction to the Fermanagh players, he told them to expect nothing but hard work, that they should only be there if they really wanted to play for their county.

However, he did it, he managed in double quick time to develop absolute unity of purpose and spirit in the Fermanagh dressingroom. Mulgrew led from the front, betraying no real surprise as his light, young team went on its run and scarcely disguising his impatience at the sudden fascination with his team.

“What I can’t understand is the all the attention,” he lamented before the Armagh match. “One day you are walking around same as ever, then you win a match and the phone is hopping mad all day.”

He led his team with absolute composure, particularly in the match that was probably the most difficult for him, that dour Clones team against his native county and his old mentor, Brian McEniff.

The game, as Mulgrew acknowledged afterwards, was no classic. It was not televised and that was just as well for it was one of those private, gruelling Border derbies that can be painful to watch for a neutral. Fermanagh slogged it out, made fewer mistakes and were in control in the last five minutes.

“It wasn’t that strange until the very end and I realised that we were going to win 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 hard to make sense of it.”

But it was what happened next that was truly hard to make sense of. “The last five minutes were as tense as you will see in championship football,” said Joe Kernan of that mad day in Croke Park afterwards. The Crossmaglen man was not understating it. In those last five minutes, he knew that his team, for all their will and discipline had been sucked into the vortex as far as form and tradition and favouritism went.

Fermanagh had broken every rule in the book and neutralised Armagh’s rigorous defensive system and physicality by always moving the ball and overlapping, by knowing where the next pass was and by having the poise to land the big scores.

The immortal kick came from Tom Brewster, a stunning shot from out on the left wing and into the Hill End: the final score was 0-12 to 0-11.

“Nobody could take anything from Fermanagh today,” Kernan said. “They were magnificent.”

On it went. It has been largely forgotten that Fermanagh really ought to have played in the All-Ireland final that year. Three points up late in the second half against Fermanagh.

“With 15 minutes left, I was praying to the Lord calling in any favours we were due,” admitted Mayo boss John Maughan. “Yeah, we were really, really lucky.”

In the replay, the door was open until the end but Mayo hit two late points to win it. It was over and afterwards, as Kerry put the westerners to the sword in a tame conclusion to the championship, Fermanagh people could only wonder what might have happened had their boys been there, given the fearless mood and the all-conquering form they displayed that year.

Kerry and Fermanagh – in a way, it would have been the perfect final.

The Lakeland County has yet to return to the last four of the championship. But they have never been that far away either. Mulgrew kept pushing and cajoling his team until he stepped down after the 2007 championship and Malachy O’Rourke came in and took Fermanagh to an Ulster final replay against Armagh last summer.

“What happened in 2004 does seem like a phenomenon but it is not a freak phenomenon,” says McGinnity. “You know, everything in Fermanagh is done as professionally as elsewhere and we need to make sure that we benefit from this group of players now that we have them available to us.

“We have a good coaching system and a good schools system and there is a certain element of truth that it just so happened that a generation of players happened to be born around the same time. It has been a matter of small things coming together at the right time.”

And so to the latest season. As ever, Fermanagh have been given few breaks: a preliminary draw against Down hardly represents an easy passage through to the Ulster final.

And, as usual, they are battling against injuries to key players – Marty McGrath and Barry Owens heading the casualty list.

“Fermanagh need their best players on the field at all times,” McGinnity says. “If we can get those guys and the likes Mark Murphy, Kieran O’Reilly and Ryan McCluskey back playing to form, we will be there or thereabouts. We get hammered for the referring to the population thing here – we want to compete on a level playing field and we don’t want to refer to that.

“But the fact is we have a hard time replacing key players. I mean, we waited 120 years for Barry Owens to come along: we aren’t going to pull someone out of the hedges.”

On paper, nothing has changed: Fermanagh remain, with Wicklow, the only county not to have landed provincial honours. But that does not seem so significant any more.

Since that memorable summer, other teams have looked at Fermanagh differently. And perhaps they have come to look at themselves differently also. Tomorrow, they will come with no apologies.

FERMANAGH (v Armagh 2004): N Tinney; N Bogue, B Owens, R McCloskey; R Johnston, S McDermott, P Sherry; M McGrath, L McBarron; E Maguire (0-1), J Sherry (0-1), C Bradley (0-2, 1 50); C O’Reilly, S Maguire (0-5 3 frees), M Little. Substitutes: T Brewster (0-3, one free) for O’Reilly, H Brady for McGrath (temp 37 mins – half-time), H Brady for McBarron (temp 42-44 mins), D McGrath for J Sherry (58 mins).