On the following morning two of the Fermanagh players walked into mass at The Gran Monastery and were greeted by applause. Fr Brian D’Arcy was on the altar. His dad Hugh had played for Fermanagh and Fr Brian was a county minor. All of his life Fermanagh football had played with his heart: twisted it, torn it, broken it, mended it. He lived a long time to see two Fermanagh footballers celebrated at Sunday mass.
For the first time in their history Fermanagh will play a championship match in Croke Park this afternoon. Under the old rules you had to win an Ulster championship to gain such a privilege. Fermanagh didn’t have a principled objection to that system. They just never cracked it. Faithfully they bought their lottery ticket and one year they got five numbers up but the jackpot never landed in their lap.
When the draw was made last Sunday night Fermanagh weren’t crazy about getting Tyrone. Laois was their preference; Galway or Kerry would have been daunting but exhilarating too. For Fermanagh there was no ring to Tyrone’s name: they were just familiar and difficult. They found the words to muffle their disappointment but the smile was a face they were wearing. A summer afternoon in Croke Park is the sexiest date Fermanagh have ever had. Sharing it with Tyrone just felt like having a chaperone.
Where Colm Donnelly lives, in the village of Tempo, Tyrone is close. Brougher Mountain separates the counties but it is no barrier between them.
Inter-marriage is common and bloodlines are blended. Donnelly’s father was a Tyrone man who reared his children in Fermanagh and that was the flag they followed. Colm’s brother Paddy was Fermanagh county board secretary for 28 years until his death two years ago. His brothers Gerry and John played for the county. John managed Tyrone too but for fear of being branded a snitch Colm neglected to mention this. Under questioning John broke down immediately.
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John was an outstanding footballer. He started with Fermanagh in the late 1960s and gave them all of the 1970s. Fermanagh spent a couple of those years in Division One but mostly they were a shambles. One year they asked him to be player-manager. They drew Armagh away in the first round of the Ulster championship and were leading at half-time by 10 points. In the end they lost by one. They blew up. Their legs and their lungs gave in.
“There was no culture of collective training in Fermanagh prior to that,” says John. “You’d get together three or four weeks before the championship and three or four boys might turn up. You played in the championship but it was only going to be one game. That was the attitude.”
The attitude evolved over generations. To a certain extent they took shelter in their circumstances. The old saying was that Fermanagh was half water and half Protestant. You can do the maths and work out their pick. At the moment it stands at roughly 25,000 Catholics. Over the last 100 years there were 20 summers when Fermanagh didn’t even enter a team in the Ulster championship and when they won the junior All-Ireland in 1959 it was with their first team. The rhythms of football life in the county accommodated defeat.
“We would fall back on our club championship and our League,” says Joe McGurn, county board chairman. “I can recall in the past we could play our club league, our club championship, our inter-county championship and we could have Sundays to spare to go away off. We had our own bus in the club (Enniskillen Gaels) and I’d drive the bus and we’d go away to Donegal and arrange a challenge match. We had time to do these things.”
A couple of years after John Donnelly quit playing Fermanagh reached the 1982 Ulster final, the only Ulster final they have ever contested. On the way they beat Derry by a point and Tyrone by a point but Joe Kernan came on as a sub in the final and swung it in Armagh’s favour. There was a sense that Fermanagh could be something but it wasn’t a rooted belief.
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Slowly a corner was turned. Terry Ferguson came from Meath to be the manager and later John Maughan came from Mayo. Their appointments were mission statements. Behind the scenes Fr Brian was consulted and his contacts employed. He was convinced of what was possible.
“From what I saw in other successful counties I preached endlessly that there was no difference between those players and the players available to Fermanagh even with our small pick. But the mental approach and the physical approach wasn’t up to standard. The dedication wasn’t there. The players were as dedicated as they were asked to be but not as dedicated as they needed to be. Nobody has a right to win but everybody has a duty to prepare.”
Colm Donnelly is chairman of the supporters’ club now but he has been close to the scene for as long as he cares to remember. Maughan’s term of office was like nothing they had witnessed before: “For the players it was like children learning to walk. For the first time in their lives they were told what to eat, what to do, when to sleep, when to go out. Lads in their early 20s, students, it was a big turning point in their lives to be told that.
“They’d turn up at training sessions and be asked, ‘Why are you two minutes late?’ The whole discipline thing changed. Unfortunately John didn’t work but it wasn’t John’s fault.”
A supporters’ club was started a couple of years ago but because there was no purpose for one it didn’t hold together. Donnelly remembers National League matches where the crowd didn’t reach three figures and championship games where the Fermanagh support was stretched to reach four figures. This year, though, Donnelly and Patsy Dolan revived the supporters’ club.
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“We revamped the thing. We had to give the team manager and his back-up team more power. Prior to that the players were calling the shots. We were fed up with the situation of being classified as no-hopers all the time. We got that syndrome off our back. You have to buy success.”
One of the most powerful of the Fermanagh players and one of the most gifted was Rory Gallagher. Everything was processed through him. On match days the breadth of his influence was obvious to the naked eye. It wasn’t unusual for him to approach the selectors and suggest changes, pointing at the players he wanted shifted or removed. This year, though, Gallagher walked away.
Most counties would struggle to replace him. Fermanagh simply couldn’t. They chased him to come back but he remained intransigent in his exile. Over the year the wound closed and you can scarcely see the scar now. Donnelly wasn’t unhappy at the turn of events.
“As far as I’m concerned we didn’t want Rory back. He was dictating terms. He was never a great leader. He played well when you were winning well. Anybody could do that. He’d never take a thing by the scruff of the neck and take it on. This team as it is now are all prepared to work hard and work as a unit.”
Naturally success would come at a price. According to McGurn it cost £180,000 to prepare the team during Maughan’s year as manager, despite the fact that the regular post-training meal was dominated by fruit rather than steak — this year it has cost £188,000 already, including a week’s training on Gran Canaria.
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They have turned a buck every way they can. Around the time of the League semi-final against Tyrone they opened a supporters’ club shop in Enniskillen, rent-free from a smitten landlord. All summer the demand for jerseys has consistently outstripped the speed at which they can provide them. On their website they canvassed for original compositions of a Fermanagh GAA song. “The green, the white and the bold” by John Farry was the winning entry and they’ve been flogging the tape ever since. The Fermanagh Association in Dublin was in existence when Fermanagh won the junior All-Ireland in 1959 but it had lapsed into a coma. They were awakened and with them the Fermanagh Association in Belfast. They ran dinners and race-days and shovelled coal onto the fire. Successful business was always one of Fermanagh’s biggest exports.
“Proportionally speaking,” says Fr Brian, “Fermanagh has an extraordinary amount of high achievers. Down the years it was said that the people who stayed in Fermanagh were the ones who hadn’t the get-up-and-go to get up and go. That attitude has changed though.”
And still they need more. In the GAA club notes of the Fermanagh Herald this week notice is given of a second church gate collection for the team’s training fund to be taken up this weekend.
The goodwill, though, is enormous and widespread. “It’s not only Catholics that are supporting us,” says Donnelly. “We’d have a few non-Catholics sponsor us. They’ve come up to us and said,‘Can we help out?’” McGurn has noticed it too: “It’s amazing how many from the other side (Protestants) are going to the matches. I heard about ones in Sligo (against Mayo) last Saturday night week and I couldn’t believe it. Business people. I could not believe it. It’s great.”
Funny how times change. When Enniskillen Gaels were trying to purchase the land for what is now Brewster Park they ran into cross-community turbulence.
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McGurn was in the thick of it. “It was impossible to get it. Protestants owned the land and in those days they wouldn’t sell the Catholics ground — and the poor old Catholics had nothing to sell them. Two people bought it on behalf of the GAA but the owners thought it was going to be used for other purposes.”
All that is behind them now. Four years ago McGurn initiated and prosecuted the purchase of 33 acres of hilly land outside Enniskillen. It was the first property the Fermanagh county board ever owned. People told him he was mad but the vision in his mind’s eye was clear and it has been realised. Two playing pitches have been levelled off, circled by a mile-long cross-country running track. Dressing rooms will be built soon and next winter Fermanagh will have their own training facility. It cost them over half a million pounds and the debt as it stands is only 50 grand. Money was tight and still they did it.
Numbers are tight and today they will be in Croke Park. Green, white and bold. Imagine.
Tyrone v Fermanagh
Today, Net 2, 1.45pm, throw-in, 2pm