Fermanagh keen to make Croke Park a second home and earn spot in Tailteann Cup decider

There is a possibility that the Fermanagh football team could find a new temporary home in Croke Park.
Having disposed of the challenge of Wexford there, Kieran Donnelly's side are chomping at the bit to cross swords with Kildare in the Semi-Final of the Tailteann Cup on Sunday (4pm).

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Sunday sport: Last two places in All-Ireland football quarter-finals up for grabs

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Tyrone blazed the trail — now everyone must suffer for All-Ireland glory

It was the spring of 2005, five months before Tyrone won an All-Ireland while bringing the entire championship itself into uncharted territory, when the conditions that nourished all the history that followed were laid down. Wexford had just beaten them in a league semi-final, but for everything unexpected about the result there was enough circumstantial evidence to let Tyrone off the hook. They were getting battered by injuries. Backs were moonlighting as forwards to fill the gaps. Brian McGuigan was in Australia. Peter Canavan's ankle was aching away with no one sure how much was left in him for the summer ahead. The grief over Cormac McAnallen's death the year before still lingered over a young group like a fog, making people wonder if anything might ever matter as much to any of them anymore. It was the sort of uncertainty that never had any place in the court of Mickey Harte's thinking. The dressing room door was closed that evening while the group autopsied themselves for 10 merciless minutes. Harte offered them two roads: do what everyone expected and dine out on a single All-Ireland for the rest of their lives or push back hard. They could train harder and smarter. They could look after themselves better. Whatever baggage they were carrying from 2004 had to be stowed away. 'The excuses needed to stop,' Harte said in his autobiography in 2009. What followed was the greatest All-Ireland winning campaign of them all: two Ulster finals against Armagh and the match of the century with Armagh in the All-Ireland semi-final; three replays, Owen Mulligan's goal against Dublin that turned Tyrone's year upside-down and an epically charged victory over Kerry in the All-Ireland final. Taking 10 games to win an All-Ireland set a new record. The enormous emotional and physical impact, and Tyrone's status among the most resilient teams of any era, made it seem unlikely that anyone could ever clear that bar. But structures and times change. For nine of the 12 teams that started out the preliminary quarter-finals this weekend, the path to winning an All-Ireland title would require nine games or more. Three of them — Galway, Louth and Meath — would have to match Tyrone's 10 matches. For Donegal to win an All-Ireland they will play at least 11 games. Nothing less than making history will win it for them. A few teams have been obliged to get close to Tyrone's achievement over the years. Dublin survived nine games to win their All-Irelands in 2019 and 2023; same for Armagh last year plus a couple of chunks of extra time. Kerry took eight games to win titles in 2006 and 2009, all of them experiencing varying versions of what Tyrone went through. A handful of common themes bonded them. Playing so many games inevitably stretched their squads close to breaking point; all six teams used between 24 (Kerry 2006) and 34 players (Dublin 2019), averaging out around 26 players. Managing tiredness, injuries and potential boredom with training, while trying to ease the effects of the constant expectation leaning on them required different thinking. 'We thought a lot about how to deal with any fatigue-related issues,' said Harte in 2009, recalling the same challenge in 2005, 'and decided the best way to deal with fatigue was to stop thinking about it.' Tyrone shortened their training sessions and meetings and took care with the language they used when talking about the constant accumulation of games. 'This was a good place to be,' Harte said, 'not a place that made us ache with tiredness. We were fresh, competitively fresh. We weren't training to build up a store of fitness. We were training to play. No team in the country was as battle-hardened as we were. That counted for a lot.' Some teams required more serious surgery than others during the season. In 2009 Kerry replaced the entire spine of their team on the hoof; the Armagh team that beat Galway in last year's All-Ireland final included a dozen who lined out in their first championship game against Fermanagh. Despite the Armageddon predictions that stalked Kerry through 2006 they still started 11 players from their opening championship game. Their big season-breaking change was moving Kieran Donaghy to full-forward, unlocking a new attacking option and a fresh energy source fuelled by Donaghy's fearless and feckless exuberance. Tyrone thrived on Peter Canavan rotating off the bench in 2005; Tadhg Kennelly was a key element for Kerry in the second half of 2009. Niall Grimley was huge for Armagh last year in the same way. Spotting and catching a rising wave carried them all a long way. The scrutiny on Dublin during their five-in-a-row year was different to the absolute poison polluting the mood in Kerry during 2006 — diluted slightly in 2009 — or the questions around Tyrone's ability in 2005 to withstand the damage inflicted on their panel by injuries, suspensions and the physical and psychological Everest of facing Armagh three times. But Dublin players and management all talked afterwards about the closeness developed through the decade that pulled them through a strange year. That feeling of camaraderie through combat is common to them all. 'There's a lot of satisfaction in this,' said O'Connor the evening Kerry won the 2009 All-Ireland. 'We were being written off — fellas like (Pat) Spillane were almost feeling pity for us. But that is where you get the energy from; you get it from enjoying each other's company and trying to build it up.' The condensed season now amplifies all those demands. Training needs to be sharp and on point. Injuries have a much greater impact when there is less time to recover. Players drifting out of form now don't have all summer to find their way back. These marathon campaigns have also become a standard part of the championship landscape. Since the first backdoor championship in 2001 — excluding the knockout Covid seasons — only five teams have won an All-Ireland in fewer than seven games. Before that only six teams had ever taken seven or more games to win an All-Ireland in the 112 years of knockout championships. Before the 2005 final Harte remembered for the Tyrone players how Meath played 10 games in 1991 and still lost the All-Ireland final, and tapped the writings of Rick Pitino, the American college basketball coach. 'Success is not a divine right,' he wrote. 'It's a choice.' To prevail that year, everything Tyrone did became a simple, binary choice. Stick or twist. Succeed. Fail. Same now. 'By now I've learned that no team and no manager marches through the season to Croke Park,' O'Connor said in his 2006 autobiography. 'You tap dance all the way. Not treading on this. Not splashing on that. In three years I've learned to dance like Astaire.' That routine has now become an entire Riverdance show. All-Ireland SFC preliminary quarter-finalBallybofey, Sunday, 4pmTV: GAA+

Belfast Telegraph

17 hours ago

• Belfast Telegraph

Fermanagh keen to make Croke Park a second home and earn spot in Tailteann Cup decider

There is a possibility that the Fermanagh football team could find a new temporary home in Croke Park. Having disposed of the challenge of Wexford there, Kieran Donnelly's side are chomping at the bit to cross swords with Kildare in the Semi-Final of the Tailteann Cup on Sunday (4pm).