Sunday Sep 24 2017
TG4 All Ireland Junior Championship Final: Derry v Fermanagh
“If you said at the beginning of the year we would be in an All-Ireland final, I would have laughed at you.”
THEY are not words you would expect from a manager of a team preparing for an All-Ireland final. But you can forgive Fermanagh manager Emmett Curry for thinking it, when, you could count on your two hands how many players he had in front of him at the first training of the year.
“An All-Ireland final never looked as far away back in January when we had seven or eight at the first training session,” said Curry.
The Derrylin man is honest when he talks about his 16 month tenure at the helm of the Erne County stepping when it seemed no-one else would faced with a team that had had a big player turnover during the winter and had just been relegated from Division Three. It didn’t get any better when he took over mid-season as they exited the Ulster Intermediate Championship and then the All-Ireland series ending the season with a 41 point defeat to Leitrim in the qualifiers.
Fermanagh had not won a single game in 2016.
Fast forward a year or so and how different things are in Fermanagh.
Sometimes you have to take a couple of steps back to go forward and clearly the decision to regrade the county from intermediate to junior championship level is paying off.
They could make an immediate return to the middle grade but it is only the winner who takes all and they are not there by themselves with Derry aiming to cause an upset.
“There was no-one else to step in when I took over. I was asked to initially and I had said ‘not a hope’ but then Ann McGrath asked me again and this time I said yes,” he said.
“I am incredibly proud of what we have achieved this year and to be where we are.
“Last year Fermanagh ladies never won a match, not a league game, not a championship game, not even a challenge game.
“They were relegated from Division Three and dropped down from intermediate to junior championship grade.”
After the curtain came down on 2016, Curry knew that if he was going to stay on for the next full season he was going to have to start bringing in some of the county’s youth.
He was the minor and under 16 manager at the time he also took on the senior role so he had a pretty good idea of what talent there was coming through having also been in charge of the county’s development squad before too.
It has allowed him, Mickey Cadden and Josie Boyle to put together a squad that has a real mix of youth and experience.
It’s a team that has some very very young players and it’s a team that has some very experienced players, players who have played in All-Ireland finals before.
Goalkeeper Roisin Gleeson was the sub goalie in 2014 against Down, corner back Edel Campbell was also on the sub bench, the current midfield duo of Marita McDonald and Aine McGovern were starters as was Sharon Murphy, better known as Sharon Little back then.
Sixteen year-old Eimear Smyth has been one of the finds for the season for Fermanagh, her amazing accuracy in front of goals saw her receive the player of the match award in the Ulster final against Derry and she has continued her rich vein of scoring to help Fermanagh reach the final while full back Courtney Murphy is only 21 but she has a commanding presence.
“It shows that if you put in the effort at underage in a county then it will reap rewards for you. After last season and the way things panned out I knew it was time to bring in the young ones.
“It might seem strange to say it, but think it is the best thing to have happened, to have gone to Division Four. We have started all over again.
“The two games Fermanagh have lost this year have been to two intermediate teams, in the league - Longford who went on to win Division Four and Wexford.
“We did alright in the Ulster championship winning it and we just took each game as it came. We knew that we would have to play Derry and Antrim again in the All-Ireland but we weren’t looking past those couple of games.”
Those victories brought them to a semi-final against London in one of their toughest games of the season that needed extra-time and victory by the narrowest of margins.
“We had a great test against a good London team. You could say we ‘stole' it but at the same time we when it was there for the taking we took it.
“They were ahead of us in the game a lot of times, the game was a draw nine times and we had to keep coming back at them but we had that one chance to win it and we did it.”
Fermanagh will be fierce favourites to finally break their Croke Park duck after intermediate final defeats in 2009 and 2014.
They have already beaten Derry three times this year but Curry knows previous results mean nothing and this is the one that counts: “London was a wake-up call; we found ourselves in a real battle.
“Everyone is expecting Fermanagh to beat Derry easily but that certainly will not be the case.
“We aren’t going to Croke Park with our heads up in the clouds and our chests out.
“We are going there to win but we are not going to be thinking we just have to turn up. “Our feet are firmly on the ground and there is one last job to do.”
Sunday Sep 24 2017
TG4 All Ireland Junior Championship Final: Derry v Fermanagh
THE decision to give Derry ladies one final year might well turn out to be one of the best Emma Doherty has ever made.
It has already yielded the reward for her of getting to play in Croke Park in an All-Ireland and if she and her Oak Leaf team-mates have anything to do about it, they will not be settling for that as they eye up the West County Hotel Cup and an All-Ireland winner’s medal.
And for Doherty this opportunity has yielded a second chance.
The 28-year-old is the sole survivor of Derry’s 2008 team that reached the All-Ireland junior final in Croke Park but lost out to London that day.
Doherty was just 19 at the time and admits the occasion is all a bit of a blur as she attempts to soak it up more this time around.
“I was very young at that time. I don’t recall too much of it to be honest.
“It’s all a bit of a blur and from what I do remember it all went by so fast. I can remember bits and pieces but not much.
“I’m determined to make it different this time to take it all in and enjoy it,” she said.
Although she is the only one left from 2008, another team-mate, Ciara Moore, has played in the Derry jersey for as long as Doherty although that particular year she took the summer out and went to America missing the opportunity.
Doherty’s service too is actually broken.
She has taken a couple of years out from the county scene, most recently last year when she got married having played in 2015.
And very probably, only for the decision by managers Paul Hasson, Paul Crozier and Sean Laverty to go around each club in the county and personally speak with the club players, Doherty would not have thought twice about playing.
“At the start of the year they came around all the clubs and spoke to the players.
“They wanted to give the county a real big push this year and I could see they saw the potential in the county and their positivity made me want to give it another year.
“An All-Ireland title was our target at the beginning of the year, we don’t deny that. I felt there was one more year in me and I still wanted to play and you always think that if you could get back to Croke Park there is some unfinished business.”
It hasn’t been easy or plain sailing by any means for Doherty and Derry.
They ply their league trade in Division Four and won just one of their seven games and whether you are an inter-county player with a senior team like the Dublin's or Mayo's of this world or a junior team just as Derry are, the players giving the commitment put in the same effort and it’s far from easy.
“It has been a hard year; you are out every night of the week training with club and county and it is tough going,” said Doherty who is a dentist.
“And it is even harder on those dark wet nights on the back of more league defeats, but we kept going.
“Among the Derry girls ourselves we always knew we had the ability to reach an All-Ireland final and I think towards the end of the league where we were running close to teams that things were slowly beginning to fall into place.”
And they did so win a provincial semi-final win over the defending champions, Antrim, a first victory over the Saffrons for a long, long time.
However, then came two defeats to the team they will face on September 24 - Fermanagh - first in the Ulster final and then in the first round robin game of the All-Ireland championship meaning they faced a must win game against Antrim if they were to make the semi-finals before seeing off Carlow to get to where they are today.
“It’s 60 minutes and it could go either way on the day.
“I know if we put in the performance and use the big open spaces of Croke Park that we can beat Fermanagh.
“We have the hunger and the desire and I think now finally we have the belief. It would be great for the county if we could do it.
“Ladies football in the county doesn’t always get the credit it deserves although the boys this year have done everything that could be asked for us.
“To win the All-Ireland would be a huge boost.
“We know we are going in as underdogs against Fermanagh but I think that suits us.
“We know anything can happen and what has happened in the past doesn’t count on the day.
“In 2008 Derry had beaten London twice that year before the All-Ireland final and look what happened, London won.
“This year, Carlow beat London in the qualifiers group but London took Fermanagh to extra-time.
“We know there is not as big a gap between Derry and Fermanagh as results might suggest.''
