pablo
Well-Known Member
@pablo - Fermanagh 2004: were we over confident? Did we think we had to just turn up? Who knows?n.
@PatMustard Not sure. It was a bizarre game. From our point of view, almost everything that could go wrong went wrong. We started off well and Marsden was unlucky with a goal chance that probably would have finished it off at an early stage. It is one of two games(Tyrone 2003 the other) that I remember for the number of soft frees awarded against us-a succession of them bringing Fermanagh back into it. But we still should have dealt with that-but seemed to lose our pattern of play and never seemed to ‘find our groove’. I remember hearing something at the time that Armagh had a schedule that involved alternating weeks of high intensity training and were a bit concerned that they would have to change their routine when the qualifier schedule was announced. I might be (probably am) wrong about that. We did seem off focus, maybe the afternoon match ups with Tyrone playing immediately afterwards were a factor?
I know there was a lot of praise for Fermanagh and the ‘lovely football’ they played. I think a lot of that perspective was caught-up with the romance of the underdogs doing well. I honestly thought they were ghastly to watch, adopting pretty much the same philosophy as recent Fermanagh teams. Uber defensive-at one time all (all) of the Fermanagh team were behind their 45’, and limited to breaking out and lunging into a tackles to draw a foul, which referee was happy to give. Any Games involving a Fermanagh victory then and now, are usually low scoring affairs.
Having said that, Stevie Mc was very lucky to have stayed on the field.
A bonkers game. Just should not have happened. Sometime back, someone on this forum said a very true thing;- in the 2008 Ulster final, a considerably weaker Armagh team beat a Fermanagh team that was a better side than their 2004 counterparts.