RIGHT now, life’s not stressing Ciaran Corrigan out all that much.
This time last year, he was just off the back of that famous Ulster semi-final win over Monaghan, a game he’d started at corner-forward.
His finals teaching exams were hovering over the top of it as he travelled from St Mary’s in Belfast down to Lissan for training time and time again.
As he answers the phone now, he’s just in the door at home. 23 years of age, he’s back home in Maguiresbridge. It’s barely a five-minute drive from work, where he’s in a temporary job at St Kevin’s, Lisnaskea.
His standing in the Fermanagh setup has improved exponentially this year. For a few years, he was an in-and-out corner-forward, starting one day and not the next.
There was a stage where he suffered from the old curly finger syndrome, where no matter what issue exists, the solution is to take off the man at top-of-the-right.
By his own admission, it was never a free-scoring adventure. This year, since moving home in the literal sense, he’s found a proper home in Rory Gallagher’s plan.
From wing-back, he has become a more regular name on the scoresheet than he’d ever been as a forward. Indeed, with 0-11, he is Fermanagh’s top scorer from play in 2019.
“I’ve enjoyed football this year. It’s been helped by the fact I’m out of university and living at home, I haven’t been doing exams.
“Last year I was in final year, doing exams and dissertation and it was difficult. I’ve had a much better focus this year and been able to give a lot more to it.
“As well, we’ve been helped by the fact we’re 18 months down the line with Rory, Ricey [McMenamin] and the boys.
“Last year we were maybe playing catch-up and getting to know it, whereas this year we’re just further down the line.
”For myself, it’s just being at home has been a big help and being able to give more to training and the gym. I definitely enjoy it.
“The whole team is performing a lot better this year, we showed that through the League. Unfortunately we didn’t against Donegal but when you look back on the Ulster final compared to this year… In that Ulster final, for whatever reason, we were completely annihilated really.
“We’ve shown improvements in that end of it, just not enough improvement in our eyes.”
There’s a dominant school of thought that pulling Monaghan out of the hat for Sunday’s first round qualifier is the nightmare draw for a Fermanagh side that would have been fancied against pretty much any other team there.
The revenge aspect after last year’s smash-and-grab in Omagh looms large over the build-up, yet Monaghan were just as flat three weeks ago against Cavan as they were that sunny day last June.
“It’s the worst draw or the best draw, depending on how you look at it,” says Corrigan.
“You want to play the best teams, but they’re the only Division One team and to get them away in Clones, it’s a massive challenge for us.
“It’s a massive game for them, no doubt. They’ll be looking back to last year disappointed that we beat them in the manner that we did.
“They’ll have revenge on themselves, but that’s not on our minds. We’ll just be trying to perform better than we did against Donegal.”
There’s also a sense that everything that could have gone right for Fermanagh that day did, and everything that could have gone wrong for Monaghan did too.
Corrigan, who is regarded by many as the best hurler in the county by a distance, doesn’t subscribe to the idea that they need it all to fall perfectly to win.
“Looking back, I’d have a different spin. We missed chances, in the first 20 minutes we had clocked up five or six wides. I know myself I had two really good chances to score, one was wide and one was short.
“When you’re looking in you maybe think everything went right. We got the goal obviously, but when you’ve two big men in Eoin and Tom Clarke in there at that stage, there’s always that chance.
“Every team requires a bit of luck, but you make your own luck in those situations. I don’t know if we need luck, if we perform well.
“We haven’t been taking chances as well as we might have done, and that’s maybe the biggest difference in ourselves and the other teams to date.
“We’ve been attacking a lot better this season but we just haven’t been getting the scores. We’ve been working a lot on it but I think we can vastly improve on that end of the game.”
Football has become a hugely enjoyable pursuit for him this year. Stretching their season out beyond Sunday would be the icing.
