HAD Fermanagh not been denied by Kevin O’Boyle’s outstretched leg two years ago, it would have been one of the great miscarriages of justice in the history of the Ulster Championship.
“It would have been a complete robbery. They beat us off the park that day in terms of football,” recalls wing-back Declan McCusker of that depressing afternoon in Brewster Park.
But looking back, O'Boyle did them a massive favour by clawing Ryan McCluskey's injury-time effort off the line.
When Brian Neeson fisted a point midway through the second half, Antrim led by 11 points. They almost clawed it back but, as they readily admit, Fermanagh didn’t deserve to win that day.
It meant that, in their first Championship game under Pete McGrath, they had gone five years without a win in the Ulster Championship.
On the Tuesday night, the squad reconvened on Garvary Hill. It’s a place where no matter how loud you shout, no-one will hear you.
That evening, Fermanagh’s transformation into a side that would reach an All-Ireland quarter-final began.
Its origins? Brutal honesty.
“It was a very robust meeting,” says McCusker.
“We sat down and spoke about what went wrong. The players and Pete all gave their points of view. A lot of what we said was taken on board.”
McGrath had come with the vision of letting his side play open, enterprising, attacking football, the kind he was able to let his Down sides play.
But conceding 2-18 to Antrim convinced everyone that things had to change, as McGrath admits: “There was the gameplan against Antrim that day. It may not have been a plan that was grounded in defensive emphasis.
“The very honest, robust meeting that took place after it was something that, yeah, made me sit back and view things differently. Not drastically differently,” said the Fermanagh manager.
Everyone felt that things had to be tightened up, and looking back, McCusker believes that it’s not only the tactical changes that helped, but the fact that their manager actually took the players’ views on board.
”It was mutual. Everyone said what they thought, and any differences were ironed out.
“When you see your manager take on board what you’re saying, it shows the value you have within the group, as well as as a player. He’s listening to what we say and what we see on the pitch.”
That winter, they took a different approach. It quickly told.
In the 2014 National League, where they finished third in Division Three, they had conceded 12-81 in seven games. Their two Championship games saw them leak 3-37.
The following spring, they conceded just 4-71 in the League and in the summer, they held Antrim to 0-8 and 0-11, and Westmeath to just 0-7.
The run ended in Croke Park with the Dublin attack proving tougher to restrict, but on the whole, the year had been a massive success.
During his two years in charge, Peter Canavan constantly told the Fermanagh players that they were better than they realised.
They just couldn’t summon the results to believe it themselves.
But standing outside the Croke Park changing room last August, Pete McGrath announced publicly that his side would be aiming for a first ever Ulster title in 2016.
Such declarations are unheard of in Fermanagh, but McCusker takes it as further proof of his manager’s belief.
“There’s very few managers that would go out and say that our aim’s to win an Ulster title, apart from maybe the big teams.
“A team like Fermanagh, who have never won it and you’re sitting in Division Three at the time, very few managers would come out and say our aim is to win an Ulster title.
“For him to put it out in the media, boys are maybe sitting thinking ‘Jeez, what’s he saying that for, you’re better keeping that in the camp’.
“But he’s not afraid to say it and that gives you a bit of extra belief.”
The first step on that road, as it has been for the past three years, is a dangerous Antrim side – a side that will certainly be harder to keep to such a bare score in light of their enhanced attacking options this year.
“The team we beat twice last year wasn’t the team that was there in 2014, nor is it the team that’s coming this year.
“This year’s team is probably more similar to the 2014 team, and they came down and beat us out the gate.
“They have a serious forward line and have always had. Within the county, they have six forwards probably as good as any other county in the province.
“They’re a good team and a serious threat, and we’ll not be taking them lightly at all.”
