There has been plenty of talk lately of the length of time between the end of the league and the start of the championship being too long.

Fermanagh’s league campaign ended in relegation on Sunday with the defeat to Derry at Brewster Park and their next competitive game is not until Saturday May 20 when they face Monaghan in the Ulster Championship preliminary round.

For Fermanagh’s experienced defender Ryan McCluskey the seven week gap though is a welcome one as it will give Fermanagh the chance to work on putting right what went wrong during the league campaign and build on things that they did well.

“There is talk about the time between the league and the championship being too long but from our perspective, on this occasion I think it will help us that there is a seven week gap.

“We need to look back at what went wrong for us during the league and we also have to look back at the likes of the Down game and the Clare game and spells in some of the other games which we played well and try and build on that. We have a lot of hard work to do between now and the game against Monaghan but we will get down to it,” he said.

Fermanagh will feel that Sunday was a game that they left behind them after controlling matters for long periods of the contest and a win would have assured their stay in Division Two for another season but McCluskey accepts that over the seven games they simply didn’t do enough to stay in the division.

“What the league will give you is some type of level of where you are at in terms of consistency and your level of performance throughout the year and unfortunately we have just been too inconsistent over the seven games. We’ve only shown glimpses of what we are capable of and we haven’t been able to sustain those peaks. We could have stayed up but we’ve fallen short on the final day and there was the realisation after the game that we weren’t good enough to stay in the league. We didn’t do enough to remain in it,” he added.

Fermanagh have had problems defensively this season with the side conceding 12 goals over the course of the Division Two programme and McCluskey feels that the loss of key defensive personnel such as Marty O’Brien, Damian Kelly and Niall Cassidy to retirement was felt during the campaign.

“Something we always prided ourselves on was that we were defensively solid so this has hurt us. At the start of the year that we lost a number of key defenders to retirement and they were influential players both on and off the pitch so they were going to be hard to replace and we knew there would be a bit of transition in that regards. We have leaked goals and it has proven costly for us,” he commented.

Fermanagh were a lot more solid at the back on Sunday with McCluskey back in a familiar role as sweeper in which he was excellent but despite this the Enniskillen Gaels man felt that they were made to pay for switching off on a couple of occasions in the game.

“Although our defensive shape was much better at the weekend, we still switched off for two goals and it is something that we need to work on and as I’ve said, thankfully we have time to do that.

“We need to be switched on for the 70 or 75 minutes that a game lasts because if you’re not you can be hit with a sucker punch. This is something we have to learn from moving into the championship.”

With the league campaign now done, the focus moves to the championship and a meeting with Monaghan where McCluskey will be keen to exorcise the ghost of the last championship meeting between the sides.

“”It was a disappointing day for me personally when I got a red card when the game was right in the balance and we were disappointed to lose that day so we’ll be working hard to get a different outcome this time.

“We know that we are going to be coming up against a team who will be coming into the championship off the back of a good Division One campaign where they have performed well against the best teams in the country but we’ll get the heads down, work hard and we’ll look forward to it,” he stated.