They may have been Down, but never out

Although Sunday's Ulster semi-final represented another major disappointment for the perennially put-upon Fermanagh it was also another significant step in the rehabilitation of Down.

The county that won two All-Irelands under then manager Peter McGrath in the early 1990s had slipped to the verge of destitution.

The county reached the Ulster final in 1999 courtesy of a shock win over Tyrone. Even if that year's Ulster final defeat by Armagh wasn't a major surprise, few could have anticipated the decline that would follow.

A year later, Down were the victims as Antrim recorded a first championship win in 18 years. Even the introduction of the qualifiers a year later failed to dent the ironclad haplessness of Down's challenge over the past two seasons.

By the time Paddy O'Rourke took over from the long-serving McGrath last autumn Down hadn't won a championship match for over three seasons. One of O'Rourke's selectors is three-times All Star Greg Blaney, a major influence on both of the county's All-Ireland victories.

"We're absolutely delighted," he said. "We would by nature be a fairly confident type of county and to go three years would hurt us an awful lot. What we would be most happy with in both the Monaghan and Fermanagh matches was the guts the team showed.

"They buckled down and worked very hard and played a bit of good football as well. We're certainly competitive anyway whereas in the last couple of years a few teams had been looking on us as soft touches."

That wasn't the case on Sunday when Down had to recover from going nearly half an hour without scoring and losing Brian Burns to a second yellow card.

"I was proud of our boys," said Blaney. "They showed a lot of guts because the pendulum had swung in favour of Fermanagh. It had gone from looking like a Down victory to certainly looking like a Fermanagh victory and they were playing good football. We were on the ropes but we crawled back so we were delighted to reach the final."

Meanwhile, the GAA has indicated that it expects to be able to satisfy ticket demand for Saturday's Derry-Dublin qualifier in Clones. The match will be all-ticket and allocations are presently being distributed to the clubs in either county, with any surplus to go on open sale towards the end of the week.

"We would expect to be able to cope with the numbers likely to travel from Dublin," according to a GAA spokesperson.

Derry have already said they will need just 6,000 tickets for their supporters. "For this stage of the competition that would represent our ceiling," said county PRO Gerry Donnelly. "For the 2000 Ulster final in Clones we were allocated 6,000 tickets and ended up sending some of them back."

In Munster, demand is very strong for Sunday's hurling final between Cork and Waterford in Thurles. "Demand is unbelievable," said a county board source yesterday evening. "We're already sold out and looking for more. So far we've received 7,500 terrace tickets and 6,000 or 7,000 stand seats. Overall we're expecting to bring up to 18,000 supporters."

The story was much the same in Cork where county chairman Jim Forbes said the interest in the match was "absolutely phenomenal". By yesterday evening a sell-out was on the cards. "Tickets went on sale here (Páirc Uí Rinn) at 3.00," said Forbes, "and right now the queue is still up to Temple Hill. We should have sold our 25,000 allocation within half an hour and we'll be hoping for more."

The capacity of Semple Stadium is around 53,000.

On Saturday evening in Hayes's Hotel, Thurles, birthplace of the GAA, another organisation holds its first meeting. Hurlers on the Web is a society for those who post to the various GAA websites and chat rooms, such as clarehurlers.com, anfearrua.com, premierview.pro.ie, etc.

The society is the brainchild of Mairegangaire, a regular contributor to the sites, who organised this event for the weekend of the Munster final.

All are welcome and it gets under way at 8 p.m. Food will be served and there will be a small cover charge with proceeds going to the GAA's Players Injuries Fund.

l Wexford include senior stars Keith Rossiter and Rory Jacob in their side as they put their Leinster under-21 crown on the line against Dublin at Dr Cullen Park, Carlow, this evening. It's a repeat of last year's provincial final when a late Wexford goal forced extra-time, at the end of which they emerged winners.

This evening they come up against a Dublin side which includes six from their senior selection with star midfielder Conal Keaney confident of leading his team into a provincial final meeting with Kilkenny.

WEXFORD (U21 HC): M White; T Hawkins, P Roche, J Kavanagh; S O'Neill, K Rossiter, E Keeling; W Doran, J O'Connor; D Mythen, P Curtis, D Nolan; R Jacob, T Devereux, A Kavanagh.