Fermanagh lodged an appeal yesterday morning (Wednesday) against the red card received by Ryan McCluskey on Sunday with manager Pete McGrath describing the sending off of the experienced defender as “very harsh”. McCluskey was punished for a challenge on Owen Duffy with 12 minutes to go at Breffni Park, referee Paudie O’Sullivan showing the red card on the advice of an umpire, and while McGrath accepts that the Enniskillen Gaels man was impetuous, he feels that the incident merited no more than a yellow card.

“It was very, very harsh,” said McGrath. “I think Ryan was a bit impetuous and a bit frustrated and that caused him to do what he did but it deserved a yellow card, nothing more than that. There is no way that his action put the player on the ground in any kind of risk, he sort of poked his foot in towards the ball and that was that. I don’t know what the umpire saw that made him intervene but it was very harsh and obviously very unfortunate for the team.” It is understood that an appeal was lodged on Wednesday morning.

McGrath added: “If there is an avenue for appeal, which I believe there is, then we certainly have to go down that route.” Ther Fermanagh manager was also left disappointed by The Sunday Game’s analysis of the incident and the selective nature of the clips that they showed, the Fermanagh manager feeling that other tackles carried much greater potential for risk than McCluskey’s but weren’t highlighted on the show.

“I’m not sure of the footage of the Dick Clerkin incident, I don’t know if there was footage because the camera seems to be elsewhere, but even take the tackle on Ruairi Corrigan earlier by Darren Hughes, which I thought was a very dangerous tackle because he made full contact with Ruairi’s upperbody and head, and he got a yellow card for that. If you compare the potential risk that Ruairi was put at and try and assess the potential risk that the Monaghan player was put at that Ryan McCluskey was involved in, there was no comparison,” he said.

The defeat leaves Fermanagh now entering the Qualifiers and a familiar face awaits following Monday morning’s draw with Fermanagh paired against Antrim, having beaten the Saffrons at Brewster Park on May 31 in the Ulster Championship. Fermanagh will once again have home advantage for the tie which will be played on Sunday July 5 and McGrath expects Frank Fitzsimons Antrim outfit to travel to Enniskillen in a confident frame of mind after they bounced back from the loss to Fermanagh by defeating Laois in Portlaoise last Saturday.

However, the Fermanagh boss says that he and his players reset their goals in the changing rooms at Breffni Park following Sunday’s defeat to Monaghan and they are now targeting a run in the Qualifiers.

“They will be coming into the game off the back of a good win in Portlaoise and we are coming into the game off the back of a defeat and you could say that it might give them confidence and momentum but by the same token we decided in the changing room after the game that we are certainly good enough to be playing football much later in the summer. The draw is the draw, it is Antrim, it is a home game, we’re unbeaten at Brewster Park this year and we simply can’t allow our season to end on Sunday week. That’s the message I will be driving home to the players,” commented McGrath.

In that first meeting with Antrim, Fermanagh were without captain Eoin Donnelly and lost attacker Ruairi Corrigan to injury early on but Donnelly was superb over the 70 minutes against Monaghan while Corrigan came on for the final 20 minutes and McGrath expects that last Sunday’s game will have brought both players on ahead of the game on July 5.

“You would like to think that Ruairi will be in a greater state of readiness than he was to come on Sunday. He hadn’t done very much training since the Armagh game in the league final because of the hamstring injury but he was given the green light to go for 30 or 35 minutes on Sunday. You would like to think that on Sunday week he will be in a healthier place. The contribution he made to the National League was immense and we are going to need that contribution to go forward in the Qualifiers,” he said.

Donnelly went on to produce a man of the match performance against the Farney and McGrath will be hoping for more of the same from his captain against Antrim.

“To come back and play as well as he did given the lay off he had from actual football was excellent. The game will have done him a world of good and if he can take Sunday’s performance into the Antrim game that will be something for us to look forward to,” added the Down man.

Although the Monaghan game ended in a ten point defeat, the margin of the loss did not reflect the nature of the game and McGrath says that Fermanagh can take many positives from the semi-final into the Qualifiers.

“Generally, the performance was very encouraging in terms of the intensity and in terms of the defensive play and at times the team play,” he stated.

“If you consider with 33 minutes gone in the first half it was a draw, and we had marginally the better of the play in that 33 minutes before they slipped over two points in the 90 seconds before half time, you could say that the first half was very evenly contested. Even with 59 or 60 minutes gone there was only three points in it and we were right in that game and this is against a team that has been in the last two Ulster finals, a Division One team and a team that I would say will certainly be targeting the All Ireland semi-finals this year. If you just look at it in this way then you would have to say that the team on Sunday played exceptionally well at times,” he added.

However, he is only too aware that there is also areas that they need to improve on, especially in attack.

“Having watched the game back we made mistakes; we coughed the football up very cheaply at times, we committed unnecessary close in fouls that gifted them points. We certainly have to improve our scoring rate and we have to look at a more dynamic forward plan, that needs to be looked at urgently as it’s a bit laboured and one-dimensional. We have to look at something that is going to shake that up and I think we have the players in the squad to do that. “At this stage we face a very tricky game against Antrim on Sunday week and this is what we have to try and address. We have to learn from the Monaghan game, take the positives, take the things we have to improve on and then revisit Antrim again and get ready for them because it is absolutely essential for the well-being and the progress of this squad that we do make a lot of ground in the Qualifiers this summer,” stated McGrath.