Fermanagh defender Marty O’Brien says that they are keen to ‘get the show back on the road’ by beating Wexford this Saturday in Round One of the All Ireland Qualifiers.
The defeat to Donegal was a big disappointment for the Fermanagh players and management but they have dusted themselves down and O’Brien feels that they are ready for the challenge that Wexford will provide.
The Devenish clubman would love another run like last year when they made it through to the last eight before going down to Dublin at Croke Park.
“It is disappointing that we are out of the Ulster Championship but we had a good run out of the Qualifiers last year and we will be taking it serious again this year. 
“We had a couple of great days like the one against Roscommon at home last year which brought a good feeling back to the county regarding the football team. It’s hard to get behind a team when you have only two games every season so it is good to get a run and get supporters behind us. That was last year though and we need to do something similar this year.”
While Fermanagh will be looking to put together a run, O’Brien says that they are looking no further ahead than this week’s encounter against Wexford.
“Our focus right now is on Wexford. We are confident that we can beat them although we’re not going to take it for granted. They won’t be fearing Fermanagh coming down to play them and they put Down out of the Qualifiers last year so they will be looking to do the same to us and maybe get a run going themselves,” added O’Brien.
A long journey to Wexford Park awaits Fermanagh but they have a reasonably good record against Leinster sides in recent years and they may be happy enough to be away from Ulster opposition at this stage with Fermanagh having struggled against teams from their own province.
“Wexford is a long trip and we would have liked something closer to home but over the last couple of years we have a fairly good record against Leinster opposition, especially if you compare it to our record against Ulster opposition which hasn’t been as good for some reason,” he said.
And he believes that Fermanagh will have benefitted from having 13 days to prepare for the Wexford game instead of facing a six day turnaround.
“It would have been tough to turn it around in six days after the defeat in Ballybofey although no doubt if it had of been the case we would have come out fighting. It is better to have that extra week, we are back up and running now and we will be ready for Wexford,” he commented.
The Qualifiers is all about building momentum and O’Brien is in no doubt that a win on Saturday will lift confidence.
“There is nothing beats winning and hopefully we can get the show back on the road this week. The confidence would then be back up again and we would be ready for whoever we would meet. Getting the win under our belts against Wexford though is the sole goal at the minute.”
He does feel though that if Fermanagh are to progress then they will have to have learnt the lessons from the loss in Ballybofey and in particular the second half performance.
“The second half against Donegal was disappointing for us. They seemed to be just a bit shrewder, they managed to control the game and were that bit better organised. I think though that it will stand to us having played against that performance that Donegal put up against us. We’re not that used to playing against a team that would be that well organised and that moves so well as a team both forward and back. I would hope though that we would be ready for it the next day we would come up against it. There are lessons to be learned and we know ourselves where we fell down, we had chances and we had possession and it didn’t materialise on the scoreboard and that’s something we’ll have to put right,” he said.