Fermanagh manager Pete McGrath is expected to meet with his management team tonight (Thursday) to make a decision on whether they want to stay on in the post or whether McGrath will call an end to his four year terms as Fermanagh boss.

Fermanagh’s season came to an end on Sunday evening in the Athletic Grounds with a nine point loss to Armagh and McGrath said after the game that he would sit down with the management team to discuss their future.

“I think the management will sit down maybe this week sometime and we’ll take a decision about whether we feel we can take this group any further than we have taken them,” he said.

McGrath acknowledged that this was by far the most difficult of his tenure in charge of Fermanagh, describing it as his ‘annus horribilus’.

“The first season was a ‘getting to know you’ season and there was no damage done. 2015 was a great odyssey in getting promotion and getting to the All Ireland Quarter final and last year we stayed in Division Two and then had that game against Mayo where we were maybe a bit unfortunate.

“But this year has just been an annus horribilis, just horrible. You are relegated and you lose two championship matches each by a margin of nine points it doesn’t get much worse than that so we’ll have to look at that,” he said.

The retirement of a number of experienced performers at the end of last season hindered Fermanagh going into this season and on top of that they have been hit by a string of injuries over the course of the season and McGrath admits when a county the size of Fermanagh is missing that number of players then strength in depth is a problem.

“Somewhere along the line maybe it is down to the quality of player because when your resources are being depleted then there is going to be a shortfall whether you like it or not and I think that came home to roost against Monaghan when we had a number of people missing.

“You go back to the Mayo game last year and you had six of those players not playing against Monaghan and a county the size of Fermanagh, you cannot sustain that. You need everybody there and everybody fit.

“We had the players we knew we were losing( through retirement and travelling) but then we had Ruairi’s injury which was a big blow, we got nothing really out of Ryan Jones through injury and then we had the boys who left the panel. On top of that we had Tiernan Daly and Eddie Courtney’s injuries. You couldn’t have scripted the injuries and absenteeism, it was quite chronic,” he added.

On the game itself, McGrath admits that his side were second best on the night.

Fermanagh had enjoyed a good spell in the first half when they hit five points in a row but Armagh dominated otherwise, taking a two point lead in at the break before pulling clear in the second half.

“We had a good opening 20 minutes when we went from two down to three up but then they scored five in a row.

“I knew to get anything out of the game we were going to have to play an awful lot better in the second half than we did in the last ten or 15 minutes of the first half because they were dictating the pace and the tempo of the game at the end of the first half.

“In the second half, though Armagh showed more strength, more power, more penetration, more cohesion and we started to struggle in key areas of the field. We had too many attacks that ended up turned over and we were then punished down the other end.

“The longer the second half went on Armagh looked a better team, they were stronger, they were more physical, they were getting through us easier and in the end it was a disappointing performance,” said the Fermanagh manager.