Fermanagh football team captain Declan McCusker is keeping his fingers crossed that he will get the opportunity to make a big point when his team confront Tyrone in the Ulster Senior Football Championship qualifier at Brewster Park, Enniskillen (6.30) on Saturday.
he long-serving McCusker – he first donned the county jersey in 2011 – has been battling against injury lately and right now he is in a race against the clock as he bids to make the cut to face the All-Ireland champions.
Frustration may have been the name of the game for schoolteacher McCusker of late but this has not served to diminish his appetite for what will be his team’s biggest game of the year.
“I’m back training and I fervently hope that I will be fit for Saturday but it’s tough going. This is a huge match for Fermanagh and as captain I would just love to be involved but we will see how things turn out. I desperately want to play a part,” reveals McCusker.
With Fermanagh having failed to gain promotion from Division Three of the Allianz League, McCusker believes that “any win” against Tyrone would be a massive boost for Kieran Donnelly’s side.
“The fact that we only managed to collect one point from the four on offer in our last two league games militated against us in terms of promotion but we have put that behind us now. Our focus is to try and raise our game to a new level against Tyrone and restore our pride. To be honest, any win would do us,” stresses McCusker.
In their opening league game against Antrim, Fermanagh spurned goal opportunities which ultimately led to an unexpected defeat but since then the team has acquired a better balance.
“We let Antrim off the hook because after we had missed chances they got a goal and we were chasing the game from there. We like to think that we have absorbed lessons from the league and we hope to show evidence of this next Saturday. Our league form could be said to have been patchy enough but we know that we are capable of better,” states McCusker.
It has not always been a backs to the wall situation for McCusker, though, at county or indeed club level.
In 2018 the Erne side reached the Ulster final only to lose out to Donegal (2-18 to 0-12) but two years later it was celebrations and jubilations as McCusker helped his St Joseph’s, Ederney side to their first Fermanagh senior club football championship title in fifty-two years.
Having acquired a taste of progress on the provincial scene four years ago, McCusker admits he would like to see Fermanagh replicate that achievement this time round.
But day-dreaming is not his forte. Instead he lays it fairly and squarely on the line as he ponders Saturday’s eagerly-awaited contest.
“Look, we have to be honest and open here,” insists McCusker, “Tyrone have been playing at a much higher level in the league than us, they won their last two matches against Mayo and Dublin and they will undoubtedly be desperately keen to retain their Ulster title.”
“Any assessment of these facts could be said to point to only one thing and that’s a Tyrone win but we will be giving it everything. We are at home, the boys are very keen to prove themselves against quality opponents and they know that whatever happened in the league will be forgotten if we happen to claim Tyrone’s scalp.”
The Fermanagh side has undergone something of a transformation of late with Johnny Cassidy and Luke Flanagan maturing into very capable defenders, Brandon Horan and Joe McDaid gaining in status when deployed in the midfield sector and Josh Largo-Ellis and Darragh McGurn more than repaying the faith shown in them by the management.
While Sean Quigley is undoubtedly Fermanagh’s leading hot-shot, McGurn’s creative flair and cultured finishing see him fulfilling a key role up front as a dynamic attacking force, his influence particularly pronounced at present.
But Fermanagh’s attacking skills could be curtailed by a Tyrone defence in which players such as Frank Burns and Michael McKernan have come to the fore.
Manager Donnelly is likely to take a positive stance, although he is fully cognisant of Tyrone’s capacity for counter-attacking at considerable pace, something that McCusker too is acutely aware of.
“Tyrone have shown over the league that they can turn defence into attack at lightning speed. They break quickly and can wrong-foot their opponents because of their angles of running but I think Kieran will have a plan to try and counter this,” points out McCusker.
“We know we certainly cannot afford to find ourselves chasing the game so our concentration and intensity must be maintained throughout.”
