‘People think we just run around, which is crazy...’
BACK pressed against the Healy Park tunnel wall, Rory Gallagher watched as his players were swallowed up by a green and white tidal wave of support on the pitch.
Reaching Ulster finals is something to be celebrated when you have only ever reached five previously in your history, but the flip side is it can also leave you flat when the big day comes around.
After all, there has to be a reason why they, along with Wicklow, are the only two counties still waiting for a first provincial title, but Gallagher was in no mood to poop their party.
‘That’s what it’s about. I’ve been on the receiving end against Monaghan in Clones in 2015 and their elation when we were beaten in a tight game. You have to express emotion and that’s what it’s about. It doesn’t bother me. You have to embrace life and you have to embrace football and there’s no joy if you don’t enjoy winning.
‘They enjoyed their win against Armagh, they had a night out and they went back at it the next day. They’re just good lads, they’re entitled to enjoy it and that’s the test, if they’re not able to handle it then they’re not much good to me,’ said the Fermanagh manager.
This was surely his best day on an inter-county sideline. He won two Ulster titles and an All-Ireland as Jim McGuinness’ assistant, while on his own he took Donegal there in back-to-back seasons but his failure to win the Anglo Celt most likely hastened his departure last autumn.
It looked then that a promising inter-county management career had hit the rocks, but the job he has overseen with Fermanagh might just go down as his greatest trick.
He has armed them with structure and purpose, led them to promotion out of Division 3 and to a first Ulster final in 10 years. He has shown his players some tough love too, imposing a level of discipline which was not always there.
He stood down Seamus Quigley because he breached a drink ban last weekend, but no toys were thrown out of the Fermanagh pram as a result.
‘We love Seamie. He has been brilliant for us all year. There was a little incident last week and we had to put the team first. I thought the best thing to do was for him to sit this one out. He is a great lad and he will be raring to go for the final,’ vowed Gallagher.
That he could be so open about Quigley’s demotion is a measure of the culture he has created in the squad, but he bristles at the notion that Fermanagh’s rising can be simply explained by a system-based game-plan.
Individually, there were some heroic performances, not least from the likes of Che Cullen, James McMahon and match-winner Eoin Donnelly, and Gallagher believes his players should now be getting the respect they deserve.
‘People seem to think all we do is run which is absolutely crazy. They have become a smarter team. We worked hard on cutting out mistakes and we worked hard on their skill level and it’s a credit to them.
‘The job Che Cullen did on Conor McManus was phenomenal, to bring that level of manmarking into your game, the same for Lee Cullen on Kieran Hughes. Conor McCarthy didn’t have a big impact, Jack McCarron didn’t have a big impact. The marking has improved massively as well,’ added Gallagher.
The irony will hardly be lost that when Fermanagh last appeared in an Ulster final in 2008, Gallagher watched from the stand after the county’s then manager Malachy O’Rourke did not include him in his squad. Now as Gallagher gets his shot at leading the county to a first title, O’Rourke will be left watching on as takes his Monaghan team out on the qualifier circuit.
However, he had no complaints: ‘It was very, very tough,’ admitted the Monaghan boss. ‘They were set up very well, they were very hungry, they marked really tight, we found it hard to get space but our boys would be the first to admit we were a wee bit off the game. When you’re a wee bit off like that, that extra bit of movement and energy, gaps aren’t as quick to appear so we found it hard to get space.
‘Towards the end we did and we went two points up and that makes it even more sickening to lose it at the end like that.’
They now head into a sharkinfested qualifier pool, which could see them drawn against the likes of Mayo, Tyrone or Kildare in the second round.
Lifting his team for that challenge is not going to be easy, he admitted. ‘It’s going to be hard to lift them. We’ve lost at this stage for the past two years, we were really hungry to get to another Ulster final.
‘We hoped we had shielded the boys from all the talk that was going around but for whatever reason, we just didn’t get the performance we needed, that’s it, that’s football.’