THE prospect of some of Gaelic football’s heavyweights rolling into Enniskillen next year may be within touching distance for Fermanagh, but Ryan Lyons insists he won’t believe it until they actually reach the promised land.
Erne Gaels stalwart Lyons was one of many men in green jerseys who ran himself into the ground for the cause during Sunday’s victory over Clare at Brewster Park, which maintained Fermanagh’s unbeaten record in Division Two after five games.
That has left them second in the table with two away games, against Armagh (March16) and current table-toppers Meath (March 24), as they eye up a second consecutive promotion.
It is heady days for the Erne County under Rory Gallagher, having started the campaign as relegation favourites, but Lyons insists they can’t allow themselves to start dreaming about welcoming the big boys to Brewster Park just yet.
“Ah c’mere, it’s only natural to think of those things, but we’ll not think of promotion until we have it sealed,” said the 25-year-old.
“That’s one good thing about the boys, that single-mindedness. Everything will be on Armagh now, there’ll not even be talk of Meath.
“We never talk about how we’re going to get promotion, it’s about how are we going to get two points out of the next game. The performance wasn’t great in a lot of areas, but two points is two points and we’ll take that any day.”
One area that frustrated Gallagher on Sunday, and in previous games, was a failure to convert goalscoring opportunities when they have presented themselves.
Lyons was denied by the legs of Clare goalkeeper Pierce DeLoughrey towards the end of the first half, with the Erne boss commenting: “The goal chances we’d be very disappointed with. We felt that when you go in there, you either take it in or you go low and hard, and then you do the opposite.
“But look, I understand it’s easy to say that – I missed plenty of goal chances in my day.”
Lyons was equally disappointed not to have rippled the net and give Fermanagh that bit of breathing room heading in at the break.
He said: “I didn’t think I was getting the ball, first and foremost.
“It was a quality ball from Sean [Quigley] in fairness. Looking back I should maybe have taken it around him or side-footed to the left, but hindsight is great. He got a shin to it to be fair to him, but I don’t think it was a great finish.”
Fermanagh have plenty of recent history with their next opponents, having come up against Armagh three times during Gallagher’s first year in charge.
The League game finished in a draw, the Orchard took the spoils in the Division Three final, and Fermanagh won when it really mattered, defeating Armagh in the Ulster Championship.
It took the Orchard a while to get the disappointment of that defeat out of their system, but Lyons feels it will have no bearing on their March 16 clash, which will now take place in Crossmaglen rather than the Athletic Grounds.
“The pitch won’t determine if we will win or lose the game, it’ll be ourselves. We know Armagh pretty well and they know us pretty well.
“To be honest, I haven’t really thought about that game. It was a dogged affair and we ground it out in the end like we have in a lot of games.
“I’d say it’ll be along the same lines again but you never know, they have a lot of players back again this year, they have quality footballers.
“They were tipped for promotion at the start and there’s obviously a reason they were tipped for promotion, so we’ll just take it as it comes.”