Getting to the All Ireland Final is the aim for Fermanagh, says Manager James Daly, as they take on Limerick tomorrow afternoon, meeting for consecutive years in the Semi-Final stage.
While they have had a strong run to make the Semi Final of the Junior Championship, being unbeaten along the way, Fermanagh earlier on in the year struggled to get those deciding results, beaten in the League Semi-Final and Ulster Final.
The goal of every team is to make the Final, Fermanagh know that having been there last year, but since then they have not won those big important games, they lost the Final, following the track record this year, Daly believes his side are now in a much better place, injuries and setbacks behind them they now need to show up and win this weekend.
“That’s your goal going out at the start of the year to get the All Ireland Final and win the All Ireland Final, it doesn’t work and at the end of the day there’s only two teams get to it, we felt in the league we definitely underperformed in the league and we carried a lot of injuries to the league.
We felt like we could have beaten Leitrim in the league Semi Final that day, but didn’t, then we could have beat Down so we didn’t, so it’s kinda like it’s time for us to stand up here you know we’ve a good bunch of girls, some really good players but a lot of leaders on the team and we’ve talked about a lot of stuff when we worked on a lot of stuff from the league, from the Ulster Championship and we feel like we’re in a better place now, the girls are in a better place, they understand what we’re trying to do as far as the game plan is concerned, it’s time for us to stand up here and win a big game.”
Fermanagh looked to have just done enough to get over the line last year against Antrim, but Orlaith Prenter equalised to send the game to a replay late on, the next day Antrim prevailed by a 13 point margin.
While the thought of last year might still be on the mind of some, Fermanagh have fresh blood in their side, new players chomping at the bit, trying to get back to Croke Park and go one further this year, Daly feels like he has some big leaders in the squad, while also not thinking about those previous defeats to affect morale.
“We’ve a lot of different players in this year who weren’t in last year, I see we have five or six starters that we didn’t have last year, that are in this year, to say there’s an ambition after losing last year, of course as a management team and as a kind of you know you lose game and but you don’t let that bog you down okay, you want to go and win, you know it was a great game last year against against Antrim and on the replay Antrim were definitely better team and won cleanly and as I said before like it’s we have gotten so far and you know next Saturday is all of it is all about winning, it’s all about getting to a Final.
The Final is always nice, we’ve been in now four Finals over the last two years and we just keep saying you’ve got to learn how to turn that into a win, like an Ulster Final last year we were well up and we lost that, Antrim scored the equaliser in the All Ireland Final last year, so there is a lot of determination with the likes of you know Shannon McQuade, Molly (McGloin), Sarah McCarville, Blaithin (Bogue), those girls were all there there last year and there was a lot of that coulda woulda shoulda okay, but you don’t get anything for in today’s game or in any game.
You just don’t get anything for that, you just gotta work on looking after business a wee bit better and even in the Semi Final against Leitrim in the league, we had the game okay, but you know, Leitrim showed a wee bit more resilience and kept at it and kept at it and finally took the game to extra time and won it.
It’s a learning curve, I keep saying and it’s when we finally win a big game that’s, you know, you’re finally on the right side of the curve and winning big games gets more important for us now, it starts now on Saturday evening, we’re playing a good Limerick side and we have to win that game.”
Injuries have caused Fermanagh turmoil since the league, despite their tie with Derry in the final round of the group played in monsoon conditions, Aisling Maguire did get minutes, while Ciara Clarke was a late withdrawal, Roisin O’Reilly has been out since injuring her ankle in the Ulster Final, but ahead of their Longford showdown with Limerick, Daly reports a clean bit of health.
“Not really no Aisling Maguire is going to start, Ciara Clarke is gonna start, Roisin hurt her ankle in the Ulster Final, stepped in a pothole and done ligament damage to her ankle, she’s training with us this week so she is available to come off the bench and she would be a very big and influential player for us to come off the bench but apart from that everybody’s got a clean bit of health and you know we’ve good physios and good masseuses, they’ve done a lot of work there so we’re you know as far as that’s concerned we’re ready to go.”
Now all their work in the lead up will be for this weekend, 60 minutes away from an All Ireland Final again, once extra time does not come into play, these two sides are well matched in knowing about the other.
Facing off in the League and All Ireland Semi Finals last year, they have yet to face off in 2023, no better time than the Final four stage, Daly does not see this one being easy and is looking forward to a huge clash.
“Definitely not no we played Limerick twice last year and it was one each, two teams were very well matched, I think on the one side, I think we got we got a good draw in the championship for the group stage we kinda away from Down, Sligo and Limerick, so we’ve got to come out swinging now on Saturday evening and we know they’re are good side so we’re looking forward to it.”
Ahead of Saturday afternoon’s tie watch the full interview with James below
Diarmuid Kearney
Diarmuid Kearney is a freelance Sports Journalist based in Co Kerry. He has more than 5 years experience covering domestic and international soccer for different media organisations, while also working for local and national print and digital organisations covering GAA.