Fermanagh manager Pete McGrath expects his squad to be in a stronger position going into their Qualifier game against Armagh than they were against Monaghan in the Ulster Championship as injuries begin to ease in the Erne camp.

Tuesday morning’s draw pitted Fermanagh against Kieran McGeeney’s Orchard men in an all Ulster clash at the Athletic Grounds on Sunday June 25 at 6.30pm and McGrath is hopeful that Declan McCusker and Ruairi Corrigan will both be able to play some part in the game while he expects Eoin Donnelly to shake off a hamstring problem that hindered him against the Farney.

“Eoin Donnelly went into the Monaghan game with a hamstring problem and he hasn’t really done anything on the pitch since but he will be back on the pitch if not at the weekend then early next week and it will give him a full fortnight and he is in good shape anyway.

“Declan McCusker played for the club at the weekend and did full contact in training on Monday night and Ruairi Corrigan hopes to get some time with the club at the weekend and he did a god session on Monday night. You would just like to think that with a couple of good weeks training behind us we will be in a better place for the Armagh game than we were for the Monaghan game,” said McGrath.

The draw could have been kinder to Fermanagh but McGrath stresses that this is a game that will focus the minds of his players.

“It is going to be like an Ulster Championship match, it is going to have that feel about it.

“We have played Armagh twice in recent times down in the Athletic Grounds, we drew once and we lost with the last kick of the game in the other and we generally play well down there. I suppose in the ideal world everybody would like a home game in the qualifiers but it is what it is and it is a game that will certainly focus our minds and I’m sure the players will relish the challenge it will represent,” he added.

McGrath expects to face an Armagh side with something to prove after their loss to the Mournemen but he is positive that if Fermanagh perform then they can come out of the Athletic Grounds with the win.

“When any team goes out of the championship and maybe didn’t perform up to expectation then the next day out there is always the possibility that you will get a reaction to that and we have to expect that. They may not have played that particularly well but they and most people would assume that they are capable of better.

However, I honestly think that from our end of things we have to go into this game saying this is a qualifier, it is sudden death and it is an Ulster team so we have to have our intensity levels, our concentration levels, our energy levels at the required pitch to get a big performance to get the result that we want. It is a result that we are very capable of getting if we bring our best performance to that game,” he stated.

The Down native says that the mood in the Fermanagh camp is a positive one heading into the qualifiers.

“The mood, the players body language and the work they have been putting in at training would all indicate that they are very much up for getting as far in the qualifiers as they possibly can. They will know that the match against Armagh in the Athletic Grounds represents a serious challenge but if we are serious about making inroads in the qualifiers, which we are, then this game is a very definite challenge and one that we are more than capable of winning.”

And the Fermanagh boss feels that his side’s Division Two campaign will have benefitted them going in against an Armagh side who played in Division Three this year.

“At the end of the day we played in Division Two and when I look at the likes of the Kildares, the Galways and the Meaths who we played I think that we will have learnt a lot from playing against those teams.

“There will be no fear and no sense of trepidation.

“We now know who we are playing, when we are playing and where we are playing. We have a couple of weeks to polish things up and we’ll look to meet the challenge head on.”